Virginia basketball fans may be asking: “Who are these masked men?”
One reason the Cavaliers are hard to identify is their 12 new players. Another is that Virginia, long a grind-it-out operation, is playing at an up-tempo pace.
The Cavaliers (5-1) will provide another glimpse of their makeover on Friday afternoon when they host Queens (3-4) of the Atlantic Sun Conference in Charlottesville, Va.
Under first-year coach Ryan Odom, Virginia is averaging 86.5 points per game. It’s a departure from the Cavaliers’ 15 seasons under Tony Bennett, who stepped down abruptly in the preseason last year.
The most Virginia ever averaged in a season under Bennett, the winningest coach in program history, was 71.4 points per game. That came in the 2018-19 season when the Cavaliers won the NCAA Tournament.
Virginia’s offense is paced by Thijs De Ridder (17.5 ppg), a 22-year-old freshman from Belgium, and Malik Thomas (14.3 ppg), a San Francisco transfer who was the top scorer last year in the West Coast Conference.
The Cavaliers look to rebound from an 80-73 loss Sunday to Butler in the Greenbrier Tip-Off. In both games in the tournament, including an 83-78 win over Northwestern, Virginia started slowly.
“In both games, we were a little tentative at times,” Odom said. “We gotta coach our guys through that and help them unleash who they are.”
In starting 5-0, Odom became the first Virginia coach to win his first five games in his debut season. The Cavaliers also became the first team in program history to score at least 80 points in its first five games of a season.
Queens also is coming off a loss on Sunday, 90-79 at Furman, a game in which the Royals never led.
Among the few positives for Queens was that it committed just four turnovers and that sophomore Maban Jabriel scored a career-high 16 points.
“When we take care of the ball, we’re gonna be special offensively,” Queens coach Grant Leonard said. “These guys are growing and they’re getting better.”
Queens is led by its backcourt trio of Chris Ashby (14.4 points per game), Nasir Mann (14 ppg) and Yoav Berman (13.9 ppg).
