The Plus/Minus: Virginia Thrashes Arkansas

Plus

Arkansas’ John Calipari remains the most successful, and entertaining, coach in college basketball. He brought his team, with eight freshman (and just one senior) to take on a Virginia team that retained every player from last year and has a trio of 24 year-olds in Thijs De Ridder, Johan Grunloh and Nolan Adekunle. Virginia’s players have multiple thousands of minutes of experience, while for those eight freshman, this was their second game.

Plus

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Thijs De Ridder played maybe eight minutes in the first half and yet just about had a first half double-double with nine points and seven rebounds. Sitting early because of early foul trouble, coach Ryan Odom inserted De Ridder back into the game with Virginia down 13 – 12. De Ridder keyed a 14 – 4 spurt as the Hoos took a 27 – 16 lead and never looked back. Arkansas, despite having a pair of seven-footers in Mikka Muurinen and Maper Maker (who very much had a Grunloh/Uganna Onyenso dynamic going on,) simply could not contain De Ridder. He got to the rim whenever he wanted and he drained a pair of threes. The only one who could stop De Ridder was…

Minus

Thijs De Ridder.

For a guy who has played a lot of basketball, his fouls were pretty stupid and he nearly hamstrung the entire team. He was called for a foul in the first minute, which should have put him on notice that he had to be careful. As of right now, there’s not a lot of depth behind him and Grunloh. So, was he careful? No. He stupidly challenged a deep three and was whistled for his second foul a minute later. 103 seconds into the game and Odom had no choice to but to bench De Ridder. Odom talked to De Ridder for almost a full minute on the sideline.

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But De Ridder, he’s got the experience, you’d think he’d get collected and pull himself together and show the experience as befits a former European professional. Not really. He picked up a third foul in the first half when he tried to poke the ball out of the hands of the much quicker, and more…

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Publish date : 2026-11-08 22:28:00

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