Six takeaways from UVA basketball’s 89-60 season-opening win over Drexel

The expectations are different this year. Virginia opened its second season under Ryan Odom on Tuesday night as the No. 9 team in the preseason AP poll, its highest preseason ranking since 2020-21, coming off a 30-6 season. Unlike last fall, when Odom introduced an almost entirely new roster, most of the faces at John Paul Jones Arena were familiar. Odom brought back every scholarship player with eligibility remaining.

Drexel was not expected to test that. The Dragons went 17-16 last season, were picked ninth in the CAA preseason coaches poll and arrived with a roster built largely around freshmen.

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For the first 20 minutes, Virginia looked every bit like a top-10 team. It jumped out to a 14-2 lead in the first 2:20, led 51-27 at halftime and never trailed. The second half was messier, but the result was never in doubt.

Here are my six takeaways from the opener.

It took De Ridder five seconds to score Virginia’s first points of the season, and he did not slow down from there.

In the first two and a half minutes, the ACC Preseason Player of the Year had 12 points, a rebound and a steal. He brought the ball up the floor and pulled up for a three, knocked down another off an assist, then scored on a layup and a putback. Drexel had no answer. Later in the half, he bullied his way inside for a layup, turned a steal into a pump fake and a Euro step through two defenders, a play that showed everything he can do with the ball.

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Toward the end of this tear, De Ridder was backing down Drexel’s David Simonovic when the 6-foot-11 freshman violently threw him to the ground. De Ridder had to be restrained by his teammates. The play resulted in a flagrant 1 but was reviewed for a potential flagrant 2. De Ridder made both free throws.

He went into halftime with 18 points on 7-of-10 shooting and finished with 24 points on 9-of-15, 2-of-4 from three and 4-of-4 at the line. He added nine rebounds, three of them offensive, two steals and no turnovers in 27 minutes.

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Publish date : 2026-11-04 04:04:00

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