The Good: More Saturday Home Games
When Virginia’s schedule came out last season, the #1 gripe from UVA fans was the severe lack of Saturday home games at John Paul Jones Arena. The Cavaliers had just four Saturday home games in ACC play and they played road games on Saturdays for seven-consecutive weeks. This season, Virginia has five Saturday home games in ACC play and, more importantly, they are more evenly distributed throughout the season, so the Hoos won’t go nearly two months without a weekend home game like they did last season.

The Bad: No Marquee Weekend Home Games
On the flip side, the Saturday home games Virginia does have on its schedule leave something to be desired in terms of the intersection of matchup and day of the week. Some of UVA’s most notable home games – Duke, NC State, Memphis – are on weeknights. Meanwhile, Virginia’s home Saturday games are against Louisville, Notre Dame, Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, and Clemson. With the exception of the Commonwealth Clash, which should provide for a great environment on a Saturday afternoon at JPJ, those aren’t exactly top-tier matchups.

The Bad: Brutal Stretch & 48-Hour Turnarounds
Virginia’s 2024-2025 could be defined by what the Cavaliers do from February 15-26. In that 11-day stretch, UVA will play at Virginia Tech and then host Duke 48 hours later. Virginia will then play back-to-back road games at North Carolina and at Wake Forest. There are other challenging games on the schedule, but this particular stretch will reveal quite a bit about this team’s chances to make noise in March. Virginia also has another 48-hour turnaround earlier in the conference slate, hosting Virginia Tech on Saturday, February 1st and then visiting Pittsburgh the following Monday night.

The Good: Virginia Will be Battle-tested
There is a good takeaway to be gleaned from every challenging aspect of the schedule. Tony Bennett has talked about it before, but the 48-hour turnarounds, while difficult, prepare a team for the conditions of the NCAA Tournament. The Hoos also play games on back-to-back days at the Bahamas just like they do at the ACC Tournament. Virginia hopes to win those games, but simply having to play under those circumstances makes a team better prepared for the conditions of postseason play.

The Bad: So Many Late Tipoffs
This is probably going to be the #1 complaint for UVA fans (and possibly the coaches and players) this season. The tipoff times have been announced for all but seven of Virginia’s regular season games. Of the 24 tipoff times that have been announced, seven are at 8pm ET or later, including three ACC games that tip at 9pm on a weeknight, a 9:30pm tipoff for UVA’s first game in the Bahamas against Tennessee, and a mind-boggling 11pm tipoff for Virginia’s road game at California on Wednesday, January 8th. While a late tipoff is to be expected when one plays on the West Coast, even a 7pm local tipoff (10pm ET) would have been more reasonable than this monstrosity of a tipoff time that will have many UVA fans considering taking the next day off from work or just not watching the game.

The Bad: Lots of Travel
With the ACC adopting a new scheduling model to adjust for the additions of Cal, SMU, and Stanford, each of the existing ACC members will have a road trip to play at Cal and Stanford every other season. For Virginia, that’s this season. But since it also happens to be the case that this is UVA’s “turn” to play SMU twice in the regular season, the Cavaliers are now traveling to play each of the new distant members of the conference this year. Add in a road trip to Florida for the ACC/SEC Challenge, which also happens to be three days before UVA opens ACC play at SMU, as well as the trip to the Bahamas for their Thanksgiving tournament, and the Hoos are going to be racking up the frequent flyer miles this season.

The Good: Those Road Trips Wrap Up Early
On the bright side, all of those long trips are on the front half of the schedule and will be finished by January 11th. That date is important because that also means the Cavaliers will return from their road trip to California (Cal on 1/8 and Stanford on 1/11) before classes begin in the spring semester on January 13th. Virginia is traveling quite a bit, but there are no massively disruptive trips for the last three months of the season, save a Wednesday road game at Miami in late January.

Good and Bad?: Early Challenges/Litmus Tests
Five of Virginia’s first nine games are against major conference opponents. It’s six of ten if you include Memphis, who certainly played like a major conference opponent when the Cavaliers faced them on the road last year. That can be a good or a bad thing depending on how you spin it. For a new roster, Virginia might take a few early defeats from facing top-tier opponents expected to make the NCAA Tournament so early in the year. But on the other hand, these will be very valuable litmus tests to see how the Cavaliers perform against the best of the best and where they need to improve. For a relatively young team, the early season will provide significant growth opportunities.

The Good: Tough, but Manageable
Overall, this schedule is tough, but very manageable. Of course, we found a few things we don’t like but that’s almost always the case. There’s nothing in this schedule that will make it impossible for the Cavaliers, even with all the new faces and uncertainty on their roster, to navigate through it successfully, win enough games to contend for another ACC regular season title, and prepare for a breakthrough in March.

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