Charlottesville, VA (cvillerightnow.com): Crossover season has become the Holiday season in UVA Athletics!  For UVA fans, their Thanksgiving bliss was likely interrupted by a dark, rough, end to the once promising Football season.  Women’s Basketball was down in Puerto Rico for three games in the Discover Puerto Rico Shootout, Men’s Soccer looked to advance in the NCAA tournament, Men’s Basketball kept themselves busy as ACC play approaches, and Christmas came early for the Volleyball team.  Let’s rundown what went down over the Thanksgiving Holiday.   

UVA Football battled Virginia Tech in Lane Stadium on a frigid Saturday night, despite a late change at starting quarterback, the lack of depth proved too costly for the Hoos, and the Hokies gave the home fans a thrill with a blowout victory, 37-17, to march into a bowl appearance.  Jay James’ full report on the game is HERE.   

Women’s Basketball played a trio of tropical games against Green Bay, Washington State, and Wyoming on a road trip to Puerto Rico.  They got the weekend started right with a hard-fought victory against Green Bay, 66-61.   Kymora Johnson continued, notching 17 in the game, alongside Taylor Lauterbach’s 9 rebounds to lead all Hoos.  Green Bay outrebounded the Hoos, and had the night’s leading scorer in Callie Genke, but the Hoos outscored them when it mattered to earn the win.  The wheels started to fall off on Friday however, after a strong first quarter, Washington State outscored the Hoos for the remaining three quarters.  Despite 20 points from Johnson, and a double-double from Latasha Lattimore, 19 points and 10 board, Washington State won out with a furious late rally in the fourth.  Some costly misses from the Hoos in the last 30 seconds sealed their fate, and it finished 75-74.  Against Wyoming, the Hoos faltered again, outscored in every quarter but the fourth, bad free throw shooting, costly turnovers, and defensive breakdowns, gave the Cowgirls a 71-66 win.  Jay James’ report on the game is HERE. The Auburn Tigers await the Hoos next at John Paul Jones Arena this Thursday night at 6:00 PM. The Tigers are 5-3, losing to Kansas by a point, 61-60 last time out.  

Men’s Basketball had two tilts with Manhattan on Holy Cross on their docket this week.  They took to the court on Tuesday and took care of business to the tune of 74-65.  Jay James has a full report of the game HERE.  On Friday, Dai Dai Ames led all scorers with 16 points against Holy Cross, Issac McKneely and Andrew Rohde each chipped in with 13 to, once again, comfortably handle their opponents at home by a score of 67-41.  They have their first big road game stateside of the year, as the Hoos head to Gainesville this Wednesday for a 7:15 tip-off with the #18 Florida Gators on ESPN2 and the Virginia Sports Radio Network.  The Gators remain undefeated, beating Wichita State 88-51 in their last game.  The Hoos then head to Moody Colisseum in Dallas for their first ACC game of the season against the SMU Mustangs, who are 6-2 and will play Alabama State in their midweek battle.  The game is at 2:15 pm on Saturday. 

UVA Men’s Soccer, who has built a reputation as Giant-slayers in postseason play, faced a red-hot team of UMass Minutemen in the round of 16 on Saturday night.  Joey Batrouni, Nick Dang, and the much-vaunted UVA defense held firm as the net was peppered with eight shots by the Minutemen attack.  They kept the pressure on UVA with set-piece after set-piece, as well as several promising attacks that fizzled out as the first half ended.  This felt much like many of the matches the Hoos had played before in both the regular season and post-season.  On cue, Kome Ubogu and substitute Hayes Wood began to threaten the UMass net.  As the clock ticked past the 70-minute mark, a time in the game when the Hoos love to strike and break deadlock much the same as this, the game changed.  Umass attacker Mike Willis sent a cross into the UVA box, the backline got set to defend it as they had all game long, Parker Sloan got his body in front of the ball and deflected the cross.  While the move was strong, the direction was not, and Joey Batrouni was no match for the ricochet.  The own goal proved to be the only goal of the game, and the attack of UVA ran out of gas.  The 2024 season came to an end in the round of 16.  Head Coach George Gelnovatch said of the game and the season “I’m proud of the guys. The team has been through a lot this year, in these last, nine or 10 games, which included the ACC tournament and the NCAA Tournament, they just really came together and were playing well down the stretch. And I’m proud of them.” 

UVA Volleyball’s chance at history came to an end last week, needing to win out to tie the program’s best win total.  #25 North Carolina dispatched them on the road.  The Heels won a grinding first set 25-19, taking advantage of some attacking errors by the Hoos.  The hosts dominated set two 25-5, with nothing going right for UVA, unable to hold onto any kind of momentum.  The Hoos came alive at just the right time going on two big runs to end set three and prevent the sweep by a score of 25-20, but the relentless Heel attack put the gas pedal down again and send UVA packing in set four 25-16.  The Hoos came home to take on Boston College in their regular season finale and immediately lost a close first set 25-20.  The Hoos came back to life after a 6-6 tie in set two, and the train kept rolling to a 25-15 victory thanks to a 4-0 run to end the set.  They won set four as well with a whopping 8-1 run to close the set out, just the right time for a 25-23 set victory, but only managed nine points in sets 3 and 5 to fall 3-2 to Boston College, for a final record of 21-10 in the regular season.  They did not have long faces for long though, as their 21 wins were good enough to earn a bid in the 2024 National Invitational Volleyball Championship (NIVC).  Jaclyn Piermarini’s report on the tournament is HERE, but their next game will be Saturday December 7th at 6:00 PM.  We will wait to see who their opponent is, it will either be North Carolina A&T or St. Johns.   

Track and Field kicks off its indoor season on Friday at the Liberty Kickoff, then it flies to Massachusetts for the Sharon Colyear-Danville Season Opener in Boston on Saturday.  Wrestling takes on Penn at home at 7:00 PM on Friday, and then heads to Lexington to battle the Virginia Military Institute on Saturday at 1:00 PM.  Finally, Men’s and Women’s squash hit the road to the Northeast to tangle with Harvard and Dartmouth on Friday and Saturday.

That ends our first Wahoo Rundown for the month of December, support UVA Athletics when you can and keep it here for up-to-date coverage around all University Sports!