College basketball does not usually start in September, and it almost never starts outdoors. On Sunday, Virginia opened its preseason at Credit One Stadium in Charleston, S.C., as part of The LinkU Invitational, the earliest college basketball game of the year and the first played outdoors since 2022. For most of the afternoon, roughly half the court sat in the shade and the other half in the sun.
For the second straight year, Vanderbilt got the better of Virginia in the preseason. Last October, the Commodores won 95-87 in Nashville, and Virginia went on to win 30 games. This Vanderbilt team is a legitimate measuring stick. It went 27-9 (11-7 SEC) last season, won an NCAA Tournament game as a No. 5 seed and returns first-team All-SEC point guard Tyler Tanner.
The game was competitive for most of the afternoon, with 11 lead changes and seven ties. Virginia’s last lead came at 55-54 on a Jurian Dixon three with 8:53 remaining, before Vanderbilt answered.
Here are my five takeaways from the exhibition.
Virginia clearly treated this like an exhibition
The most important context for Sunday’s result is who was not on the floor.
Chance Mallory sat out as a precaution. According to the broadcast, Ryan Odom has called Mallory Virginia’s best player this offseason, but he twisted his ankle a few weeks ago and has been practicing in a non-contact role. Odom indicated that, given the nature of the game, there was no reason to push it and that Mallory should be back for the start of the season. Christian Harmon, a likely rotation piece, also sat and is expected back in October. Desmond Roberts did not play either.
Odom also rested his starters for much of the second half, and Virginia swapped out entire lineups at a time in the first. At least 14 Cavaliers played, and 12 scored. The bench outscored the starters 37-36. Much of the decisive late stretch came with the end of the rotation on the floor.
There was also a scare. In the first half, Thijs De Ridder walked a little gingerly after his second three, and Odom called an immediate timeout to get him out. However, he started the second half, and Virginia immediately fed him in the post, which was a good sign.
In the end, this game does not count for anything, and Virginia lost to Vanderbilt last year only to go on to win 30 games. However, Vanderbilt played deep into its bench too, and there were major questions that arose from Virginia’s performance on Sunday. The bright spot is that there are still more than five weeks to answer them before the season opener.
The lineup is starting to take shape
Nolan Adekunle appears to have won the final starting spot.
Adekunle started alongside Jan Vide, Sam Lewis, De Ridder and Johann Grünloh. When Mallory returns, that projects to the bigger version of the lineup I laid out in the Mallory profile, with Lewis at the two and Adekunle at the three. Adekunle projects as a classic 3-and-D wing, so anything else he provides is a bonus. On Sunday, that bonus was rebounding. He led Virginia with six rebounds, two of them offensive, on a day when Virginia was getting beaten on the glass. He also hit a corner three off a nice kick-out from De Ridder and scored on a layup. He still has things to cleanup as he had three turnovers, four fouls, and two missed free throws, but the rebounds were a welcome addition.
Dixon came off the bench and finished with six points on 2-of-5 shooting, including a go-ahead three-pointer in the second half. He is a natural sixth man in this version of the rotation. Expect him to play near-starter minutes off the bench.
Vide also impressed me. The Loyola Marymount transfer got the start in Mallory’s place and was one of Virginia’s better players. He attacked the basket from the opening possession, kicked out well and finished with eight points and a team-high three assists. After two poor misses at the line early, he made his next four free throws. He looks like the clear backup point guard and the second-best ball handler on the team after Mallory. Behind him, Martin Carrere ran the second unit. Odom named him among the team’s backup ball handlers this summer, and Sunday suggested Odom sees the 6-foot-9 Carrere as a point guard, not a wing. However, his ball handling looked a little awkward, which gives me pause about giving him too much run against power-conference opponents during the season.
With Mallory and Harmon out, the lineup is not settled. But it is the first look at how Odom sees the rotation.
Virginia was out-physicaled and out-hustled
I know this is just an exhibition, and the result does not count, but it was clear early that Virginia was not playing with the same intensity as Vanderbilt, especially in the first half. Coming out of halftime, the energy looked turned up, likely the result of Odom getting on his guys. Virginia attacked more and went to the line 18 times in the second half after nine in the first.
Vanderbilt outscored Virginia 46-22 in the paint and 20-5 on the fast break. The Commodores went 27-of-49 on two-pointers, 55.1 percent, and out-rebounded the Cavaliers 43-36, including 14 offensive rebounds. Several of those came off Vanderbilt’s own missed free throws. Jayden Leverett went 7-of-8 for 15 points and seven rebounds, and Bangot Dak added eight rebounds and two blocks. In transition, Tanner repeatedly got behind the defense for dunks.
What makes it worse is that Vanderbilt could not make a free throw. The Commodores went 10-of-27 at the line, including 3-of-12 in the second half, and still won by nine.
This is also a familiar problem. After last year’s exhibition in Nashville, Odom said, “The biggest issue for us in this game was that we didn’t do a good job of keeping them out of the lane.” It showed up again in March. In the 79-72 NCAA Tournament loss to Tennessee, the Volunteers outrebounded Virginia 39-35, led 18-8 in the paint at halftime and attempted 25 free throws to Virginia’s 11. Twice in six months, a physical SEC team has pushed Virginia around inside. Until the Cavaliers show they can match that, it will be the question hanging over this team.
Rim protection could be a concern
Last season, Virginia had two elite shot blockers. Ugonna Onyenso led the ACC and ranked second nationally with 2.9 blocks per game, and he set an ACC Tournament record with nine blocks against Duke. Grünloh added 80 more. Onyenso is now gone, a second-round NBA draft pick, and Virginia does not have a clear replacement. It was a big topic of discussion this offseason, and outside of signing a freshman, Virginia did not address it.
On Sunday, Virginia finished with one block, and it came from Elijah Gertrude, a guard. Grünloh had no blocks and did not record a rebound. When he rested, Virginia’s options did not change the picture.
Favour Ibe, the 7-foot-1 freshman, looked decent in limited minutes. He is the only backup with a frame similar to Onyenso’s, and as a freshman, his potential is immense. He knocked away a lob, grabbed three rebounds, added two assists and threw down a dunk off a Silas Barksdale offensive rebound. But on one trip down the floor, he gave up an and-one and then the rebound on the missed free throw.
Barksdale, a 6-foot-9 forward who redshirted last season, was one of the bright spots in his first game action. He had seven points on 2-of-3 shooting, with a put-back and a smooth three. However, he committed four fouls. He was a four-star recruit who should be coming into his own, and I think he could be primed for real minutes this year if he continues to improve.
Kalu Anya, the 6-foot-8 Saint Louis transfer, made a nice defensive play for one of his two steals but went 0-of-3 and also had four fouls. During the offseason, he was projected as the primary backup to De Ridder at the four, with the ability to slide to a small-ball five. However, he looked a little overmatched against Vanderbilt, and I do not see how Virginia can hold up in the paint against elite competition with him at center. As a result, Virginia may need a freshman in Ibe to contribute in a big way in year one.
Odom did experiment with size. At one point, De Ridder played the three next to Barksdale and Grünloh, and every Cavalier on the floor was 6-foot-7 or taller. But size is not the same as rim protection. Grünloh will likely have to carry that load, and Ibe’s development may be the swing factor.
The team is still shaking off the rust
The most encouraging shooting came from the bigs. De Ridder and Grünloh combined to go 4-of-5 from three.
Everyone else went 6-of-28 from three, 21.4 percent. Lewis, who made 40.3 percent of his threes last season, went 0-of-4. Carrere went 1-of-5 and Carter Lang 0-of-3. The Cavaliers took 33 of their 60 shots from three. They also went 17-of-27 at the line, 63 percent, after shooting 72.8 percent last season, which was already a weakness. Overall, Virginia’s shot selection and ability to finish off possessions left something to be desired.
The ball security was just as rusty. Virginia had 11 turnovers and just 12 assists on 23 made field goals, and Vanderbilt turned those turnovers into 12 points to Virginia’s six. A backdoor miscommunication between Dixon and Gertrude led to one. Gertrude, who led Virginia with 10 points, looked jumpy under the basket early and had two. Grünloh was doubled and stripped in the post. Later, on a steal and a fast break, a pass sailed past a wide-open Dixon for what should have been an easy layup.
These things are normal in September, and we need to remember that most teams are not even close to playing games yet. Hopefully, though, these issues will be ironed out by November.
Bonus: Virginia has a rare head start on film. Because this was the earliest game in the country, Virginia now has real tape against an NCAA Tournament team from the SEC more than five weeks before the season opener. Odom said afterward that he wanted the team to “learn from this,” and the lessons are specific: defensive rebounding, transition defense and protecting the paint. Virginia has two more exhibitions to show it took them to heart.
What’s next
Virginia has two more exhibitions before the season starts. It hosts Richmond at JPJ on Oct. 9 and plays at Villanova on Oct. 22 before opening the season against Drexel on Nov. 3.
Mallory should be back by then, and Harmon is expected back in October, which should fix some of the ball-handling problems from Sunday.
However, it will not fix the issues Virginia had in the paint. Virginia’s frontcourt has to protect the rim and finish possessions on the defensive glass, and its guards have to get back in transition. These are addressable issues, but the coaching staff will have to make them a point of emphasis in October.
Last year’s preseason loss to Vanderbilt ended up meaning very little. For this one to mean the same, the team will have to make significant improvements before a much tougher nonconference schedule that includes Arkansas, Kentucky and UConn.
