The Virginia Cavaliers lost their first game of the 2024-25 season on Sunday afternoon to the Butler Bulldogs, falling 80-73.
Malik Thomas led the ‘Hoos with 24 points. Thijs de Ridder, who was dealing with an eye injury from contact with a Butler player early in the first half, score 10 while Jacari White (14) and Chance Mallory (1) pitched in double-figures production off the bench.
Yet the Wahoo offense could not do enough to keep pace with the Butler attack. Guard Finley Bizjack cooked the ‘Hoos
with 25 points on 9-for-18 shooting. He punished an array of Virginia defenders who tried to contain him and teamed up with forward Michael Ajayi (17 points) to bully the ‘Hoos in the pick-and-roll.
With the loss, the Cavaliers are now 5-1 in the Odom era. Here are our three takeaways:
The Cavaliers’ shooting cannot be this suspect
This UVA roster was built on shooting the ball from three. It was the most consistent trait that Ryan Odom and his staff recruited in the portal this offseason. In two games over the weekend, the Cavaliers shot a combined 13-for-51 (25.5%) from beyond the arc.
Could the weird shooting sight lines in The Greebrier ball room have played a part in the two poor performances? Sure. Butler shot 40% (6-for-15, so lower volume) and Northwestern hit 43.8% (7-for-16) from deep against UVA, though.
No matter what the exact cause of the poor shooting performance was, the volume of threes Virginia takes means that it’s hard for the ‘Hoos to sustain offense when they aren’t hitting triples. Especially with Thijs de Ridder limited and less dominant than he’s been so far this year, UVA had little else to turn to while clanking long balls off the rim.
White (4-for-6) and Thomas (3-for-7) both shot well from three on Sunday. Beyond those two, the team shot 1-for-11. It needs guys like Sam Lewis (0-for-3), Dallin Hall (0-for-1), and even the bigs (a combined 1-for-6) to make more shots to make up for problems on the other end.
Plus, after an encouraging free throw shooting showing versus Northwestern, UVA made only 47% (7-for-15) of its free throws which certainly didn’t help matters.
UVA’s perimeter defense is an issue
After Northwestern tested UVA’s backcourt defensively on Friday, Butler continued to expose the Wahoo guards on Sunday afternoon.
Mallory and White are both athletic and bought in on-ball. Mallory is a smart off-ball defender. Everyone else is a question mark. Malik Thomas is athletic but undisciplined and often gets lost off the ball. Hall struggles to stay in front of fleet-footed point guards. Sam Lewis has length and is typically sound but is not laterally quick enough to be a shut down defender.
The way that Bizjack and Butler’s other guards touched the paint put pressure on Virginia’s defense and led to foul trouble and a bunch of free throw attempts for the Bulldogs
The issues UVA had against good, but not great backcourt competition at the Greenbrier raise the question regarding whether Elijah Gertrude should be a more consistent part of the Wahoo rotation. He played two minutes on Sunday and gave some relief defending Bizjack.
The knock on UVA’s lone traditional scholarship returnee is that he can’t produce much offensively. At his best, he’s an explosive splasher who can get to the rim and hit a pull up midrange jumper if need be. With Odom’s preference for three-point shooting, minutes can be hard to come by for the career 1-for-19 shooter from beyond the arc. Yet if UVA’s rotational guards can’t handle guarding on-ball and continue to get burned off the ball, playing Gertrude real minutes is one solution.
Another is adjusting the defensive scheme. UVA plays drop coverage on most ball screens (at least the ones that don’t attack the base line) with its bigs dropping into the paint and not defending the pick. That forces the Cavaliers’ guards to navigate the screens without much help.
Ugonna Onyenso and Johann Gruenloh protect the rim well. That’s become the backbone of the defense. Onyenso had eight blocks versus Butler while Gruenloh added a pair himself. Drop coverage allows them to stay in or around the paint and to help to shooters.
If UVA’s guards can’t be better getting through screens, though, the Wahoo coaching staff may need to shift its ball screen coverage and start to put more pressure on the ball handlers with the bigs sliding further away from the rim. The ‘Hoos did some switching one through four and played some bigger lineups to match up down the stretch against Butler. More experimentation like that will likely be necessary as the season progresses.
Malik Thomas can take over a game
Any issues Thomas has on defense are more than made up for by his knack for scoring the rock.
He was the driving force for the Wahoo offense versus Butler. With De Ridder banged up and his production being (relatively) limited, Thomas stepped up with a season-high 24 points on 17 shots. He attacked the paint, was efficient in the midrange on pull up jumpers, and shot well from three (3-for-7).
There was little in the flow of UVA’s team offense that worked on Sunday. Giving the ball to Thomas and either sending him a ball screen or letting him isolate was a pretty efficient form of offense. The result aside, seeing him find his groove was a heartening takeaway from Sunday’s action.
