With the portal recruiting season in the rear view, 2025 recruiting and offseason prep having come into focus, things have continued to be busy for UVa’s basketball program.The Wahoos are looking to take a new-look roster and get back to the NCAA Tournament next spring as they seek their first March Madness win since their 2019 national title.
There have been plenty of hoops headlines lately, most of which have been positive with one major injury setback news coming, too.
As we move deeper into the summer and UVa’s overhauled roster is back to work within JPJ, we’re taking a look at four recent storylines that are shaping the outlook for the 2024-25 season, and beyond.
Elijah Gertrude will miss the 2024-25 season.
The rumors from earlier in the spring were finally confirmed by UVa on June 14, with the program announcing that the rising sophomore will miss the entire 2024-25 season. Gertrude suffered a knee injury in a scooter accident on Grounds back in April and had successful surgery in mid-May. Unfortunately for Gertrude, the timing of the injury along with its severity will keep him out of competition for his second season with the Hoos.
This is also not Gertrude’s first serious injury. In his senior year of high school, the New Jersey native had to have season-ending knee surgery and that recovery slowed his initial progress when arriving on Grounds. Though UVa originally planned to redshirt Gertrude since he didn’t have as much of a preseason as he would have ideally had, the in-season injury to Dante Harris forced Tony Bennett and Co. to play him.
The most recent injury is a tough blow for both UVa and Gertrude, though hopefully it will not be impactful in the long run to either. UVa ended up filling every open scholarship, including adding a pair of guards, and Gertrude’s lack of availability probably played a factor in the addition of Dai Dai Ames, UVa’s final transfer add. Hopefully Gertrude will have a speedy recovery and better injury luck going forward, in 2025 and beyond.
Dante Harris will actually not be back with the Wahoos.
Virginia had two players enter the portal following the season and it appeared for a while fairly recently that only one would truly depart the program. Harris entered the portal relatively late in the process, tested the waters, and then reportedly opted to pull out of the portal at the end of May. The former Georgetown guard was Reece Beekman’s backup last year and if he had returned would have been able to compete for minutes at the point guard spot along with transfer additions Jalen Warley and the aforementioned Ames.
Virginia used up all of its scholarship slots in the portal window, meaning that Harris’ potential return would’ve needed to come without a scholarship unless someone else on the team was going to be designated a walk-on this year, which always seemed unlikely. Harris didn’t have a major impact last season though he did see the floor in every game that he was healthy for and while he may not have seen a big role as a senior, his addition seemed like a no-lose situation for UVa. Bennett praised Harris’ attitude and the energy he brought to the floor last season, and if nothing else, he could have been able to raise everyone’s game at practice this year. Instead, UVa goes into the fall without Gertrude and now without Harris (again) barring another twist in the storyline.
Bennett is under contract for the long haul.
Virginia announced an extension for Bennett last moth, with UVa’s big whistle now extended until the 2030 season. If he is still UVa’s coach at the end of the 2025-26 season, a one-year addition to the contract is triggered extending him through 2031; the same extension would take place year over year after that.
Bennett’s position at UVa was rock solid, so the fact that he had just two years left on his deal wasn’t any sort of indication that UVa wasn’t happy with him or that he was planning to let it expire. Adding years to the deal should allow him to answer questions from recruits and their families with a little bit more ease, though an extension doesn’t mean that he still can’t opt to hang it up whenever he wants.
Still, the extension needed to get done, as coaches of his caliber don’t usually let them run down towards expiration. Nobody knows if Bennett will reach the end of this new deal (including Bennett himself, most likely) but it does seem more and more likely that he’ll be finishing his career in Charlottesville, leading the Hoos until he’s ready to hang it up.
UVa’s non-conference schedule is starting to come together.
We don’t yet have an official announcement from UVa on its non-conference slate but each week it seems that we learn a little bit more about how the Wahoos will spend the first two months of their 2024-25 season.
Last year, UVa played 11 non-conference games and 31 games, which is the max, though in other years they Cavaliers have played 30 games total and either is possible this season.
As of now, we know of eight contests Virginia will play, with two or three more pending. Starting with the “easier” home games on the schedule, UVa is set to host Campbell on November 6, which will probably be the second game of the campaign as the season opens up on November 4th and most schools tip things off that day. UVa is also hosting Coppin State on November 11 and American University on December 22 towards the end of non-league play.
Virginia has some marquee opponents lined up as well, with most of those games coming away from JPJ. UVa will play Villanova in a neutral-site game in Baltimore on November 15, reviving a series that was split between the programs in 2015-16 and 2016-17, with the home team winning each contest. UVa will play its early-season tournament in the Caribbean, in the Baha Mar Hoops Championship in the Bahamas. The Hoos play two games there, against two of Tennessee, St. John’s and Baylor, any of whom look like strong opponents for a neutral site game. They will travel to Gainesville to play Florida in the SEC/ACC challenge, a rematch of a neutral-site game last season in Charlotte that UVa won. And Memphis will come to JPJ in December to finish a home-and-home series, following a Tigers romp on their home floor last season.
This looks like a pretty challenging schedule already, with five major opponents on the books, so the rest of the schedule will likely be filled by low-majors, with perhaps a solid mid-major program coming to Charlottesville as well.
