A year ago, Thijs De Ridder was not sure he belonged.
He had spent five seasons as a professional in Belgium and Spain, and he was the last piece of Ryan Odom’s first roster in the summer of 2025, spending much of it waiting on NCAA clearance. He had not been in a classroom in four years. Home was no longer a one-hour flight away. And he had no idea how his game would translate.
“I was just scared, really nervous in the beginning a little bit,” De Ridder told the Associated Press at ACC Tipoff this month. “I didn’t even know that my style of basketball would fit in the college basketball part.”
It fit. De Ridder started all 36 games, led Virginia in scoring and rebounding and became the first Cavalier to make the All-ACC first team since Sam Hauser in 2021. This month, the league’s media voted him ACC Preseason Player of the Year with 30 of 48 votes, and he was the only unanimous pick for the preseason All-ACC first team. The last Cavalier to win the preseason award was Malcolm Brogdon, who shared it with North Carolina’s Marcus Paige in 2015-16. De Ridder is the first Cavalier to win it outright.
Now the workload will get even heavier. Virginia is ranked No. 9 in the AP preseason poll and was picked second in the ACC, but Ugonna Onyenso and Devin Tillis are gone from the frontcourt, and Odom does not have much behind his top two bigs. De Ridder was already one of Virginia’s go-to options last year. This season, he will likely be asked to do it for more minutes than ever, in his final college season, with an NBA future riding on it.
This is the ninth installment of Streaking the Lawn’s preseason profile series. Our profiles of Chance Mallory, Christian Harmon, Jurian Dixon, Kalu Anya, Sam Lewis, Elijah Gertrude, Martin Carrere and Johann Grünloh can be found here.
Year one: Virginia’s go-to scorer
De Ridder did not take long to answer his own question. In his college debut against Rider, he had 21 points and 10 rebounds, team highs in both.
By the end of the season, he had averaged 15.6 points and 6.2 rebounds while shooting 50.8 percent from the field and 35.7 percent from three. He scored 20 or more points 12 times, the most by a Cavalier since Brogdon’s 18 in 2015-16. He also made the ACC All-Rookie team, a reminder of how unusual his path was and of the state of modern college basketball. He was a 23-year-old “freshman” with five years of pro basketball behind him.
What made him so hard to guard was that he could score from anywhere. De Ridder is a perfect example of the modern, analytics-driven game that Odom covets. He is a bruiser down low: nearly half of his attempts came at the rim, where he made 61 percent, including 14 dunks. He can also stretch the floor, making 40 of his 112 threes. And because he was so physical going to the basket, he lived at the free-throw line, attempting 172 free throws, converting them at a 70.9 percent clip.
His best stretch came in late January. On Jan. 27 at Notre Dame, he scored a career-high 32 points in a 100-97 double-overtime win, making 14 of his 15 free throws. Four days later, he added 17 at Boston College, and the ACC named him its Player of the Week and Rookie of the Week.
Then defenses adjusted.
Through Jan. 31, De Ridder averaged 17.0 points on 53.8 percent shooting. Over his final 15 games, he averaged 13.5 points on 46.1 percent. His free-throw attempts dropped from 5.4 a game to 3.9, and his shooting at the rim fell from 67 percent to 53 percent. Within two weeks of his Player of the Week award, he scored in single digits in three straight games against Syracuse, Florida State and Ohio State.
As the season went on, I saw opponents send a second defender at him in the post far more often, and he did not always have an answer. Instead of finding the open shooter, he too often forced the issue, and his ball handling, especially on his spin moves, let him down. The numbers against the best teams tell the same story. In four games against AP-ranked opponents, he averaged 12.5 points on 42.1 percent shooting, with 12 turnovers and four assists. In the ACC championship game against Duke, he went 1-of-6 for five points, with three turnovers and no assists, in a 74-70 loss.
To his credit, he answered a week later. Against Tennessee in the NCAA Tournament’s second round, he scored 22 points and made a career-high four threes, including the one that put Virginia ahead 71-70 with 2:03 left. Virginia lost 79-72, but it was a reminder of what he looks like when everything is working.
Year two: more depth, less in the frontcourt
On paper, Virginia is deeper than it was a year ago. The Cavaliers retained every eligible player and added eight newcomers, and Odom has used 11 to 13 players in meaningful minutes across the preseason. But more playable depth is not the same as last year’s high-level depth. Last season, Virginia could bring Mallory, Jacari White, Devin Tillis and Onyenso off the bench, and on some nights they were as important as anyone in the starting lineup. I do not expect this bench to match that.
The gap is clearest up front. The backcourt and wing rotation runs eight deep, with Mallory, Lewis and Adekunle holding down the starting lineup and Vide, Dixon, Gertrude, Harmon and Carrere all pushing for minutes. Behind De Ridder and Grünloh, the frontcourt options are Kalu Anya, Silas Barksdale and freshman Favour Ibe. Anya redshirted last year at Saint Louis and looked overmatched at times in the paint against Vanderbilt, Barksdale redshirted as a freshman, and Ibe is a true freshman. None of them has played a minute of Division I basketball for Virginia.
Last season, Onyenso’s presence meant Odom never had to lean too hard on either of his starting bigs. De Ridder played 27.7 minutes a game, and he topped 30 minutes only 10 times in 36 games, two of them in overtime games. That luxury is gone.
Torvik’s model projects him to play 82 percent of Virginia’s minutes, or about 33 a game, and to average 18.5 points and 7.8 rebounds. It also projects his usage to drop slightly, from 26.5 percent to 25. In other words, the model expects him to play more minutes, not a heavier load on each possession. At last season’s per-minute scoring rate, 33 minutes works out to almost exactly 18.5 points.
The preseason was encouraging. Across three exhibitions, De Ridder scored 37 points on 14-of-23 shooting and 5-of-8 from three, capped by 17 points on 7-of-8 shooting in 19 minutes at Villanova. Exhibitions are exhibitions, and Odom kept his minutes under 20 in both blowouts. The regular season will not be so forgiving.
His versatility may also be stretched. De Ridder told the Belgian outlet DH in March that he was mainly considered a power forward in Europe and was developing to play small forward as well. Odom used him at the three in a jumbo lineup against Vanderbilt, and with Onyenso gone, he is also an option at center in smaller lineups. That flexibility is valuable, but on a thin frontcourt, it also means more of the dirty work falls to him.
What I will be watching
De Ridder already has an All-ACC résumé. Here is what will decide whether he takes the next step.
Working out of the double team. This is the biggest one. When teams began loading up on him, his problems came in two forms. In January, he tried to force his way through it: in the eight games from Dec. 31 to Jan. 27, he committed 27 turnovers. From February on, teams took him away instead. His turnovers came down, but so did his scoring, and his assists did not go up. He averaged 1.6 assists a game both before and after Feb. 1, and he finished the season with more turnovers (64) than assists (57). Many of his turnovers came on spin moves into the paint, and De Ridder agrees that ball security was a problem. “Just my handle and the control of the ball,” he told TheSabre when asked about his offseason focus. “I think I’ve been struggling a little bit [with] that last year. I just worked really hard in summer to improve that.” With Lewis, Adekunle and Mallory spacing the floor, the double team should be an opportunity. If he averages two or three assists a game and his assist-to-turnover ratio climbs above 1.0, defenses will have to choose their poison.
The three in ACC play. De Ridder shot 41.2 percent from three in nonconference games, but just 29.8 percent (17-of-57) in the ACC regular season. Shooting, especially from three, was the first of his three summer focus areas, according to Sporza, along with creating his own shot and reading the game, including the pick-and-roll. If he can punish defenders who sag off him in the pick-and-pop, it gets much harder to send help in the post. I will be watching for something around 35 percent in ACC play on three or more attempts a game.
Staying on the floor. If De Ridder is going to play 33 minutes a night, he cannot spend them on the bench in foul trouble. Early last season, he did. He fouled out four times, all by Jan. 27, and committed 4.3 fouls per 40 minutes over his first 18 games. Over his last 18, that number fell to 2.6, and he did not foul out again. Fatigue is the other question. He has not carried a 33-minute load over a full season at this level, and the late-season dip last year came with fewer minutes than he is likely to play this year.
The defensive glass. For a 6-foot-9 forward who plays this much, De Ridder’s rebounding numbers were modest. More than a third of his 222 rebounds came on the offensive end, and Torvik credits him with grabbing just 14.7 percent of available defensive rebounds. Especially during stints with Grünloh off the floor, De Ridder will need to step up on the defensive glass. Unless Ibe is in the game, De Ridder will often be Virginia’s biggest player on the floor in those stretches, so he will be pivotal in finishing opponents’ possessions. He also blocked only 17 shots. With Onyenso in the NBA and the backup bigs unproven, Virginia needs more from its starting four on the defensive end. He is listed at 246 pounds, up from 238 last season, and seven or more rebounds a night would be a good sign.
The big games. Against AP-ranked opponents, De Ridder’s numbers dipped, and Torvik’s splits show the same pattern. His turnover rate climbed from 14.6 percent overall to 20.2 percent against top-50 opponents. Virginia’s nonconference schedule will test that early: Arkansas in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 8, a trip to Maryland on Nov. 13 (he went 1-of-8 for five points against the Terrapins last December), the Battle 4 Atlantis, Kentucky on Dec. 2 and UConn at Madison Square Garden on Dec. 20. Then there are ACC games against Louisville, Miami and North Carolina, plus two against Duke.
What would count as success
Per 40 minutes last season, De Ridder averaged 22.5 points, 8.9 rebounds and 2.3 assists. At about 33 minutes a game, that works out to roughly 18.5 points and 7.3 rebounds. The numbers below are my projections.
The floor: last season’s production with more minutes. He plays 30 to 32 minutes and averages 16 to 17 points and six or seven rebounds, but his turnovers still outnumber his assists, the best defenses still take him away when it matters, and fatigue cuts into his effectiveness late in the season. Defensively, he is a solid team defender but not a difference maker. That is still an All-ACC player, which says a lot about where his floor is.
What I would call a success: Torvik’s line or better. He plays 32 to 34 minutes and averages 18 to 20 points, seven or eight rebounds and two-plus assists, with more assists than turnovers and about 35 percent from three in ACC play. He stays out of foul trouble, holds up on the defensive glass without Onyenso behind him, makes the All-ACC first team again and is a real contender for ACC Player of the Year.
The breakout: he averages 20 or more points and wins ACC Player of the Year, becoming the first Cavalier to do so since Brogdon, who turned his share of the 2015-16 preseason award into a sweep of ACC Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year and a trip to the Elite Eight. Double teams become assists for Virginia’s shooters, and he is the best player on the floor in Virginia’s biggest games.
My pick is the middle tier. De Ridder has already shown he can score against anyone one-on-one. Turning the double team into an advantage is a harder skill, and I expect it to come gradually. But he does not need the breakout for Virginia to have a great season. He needs to be the player he was through January, for all of March, and he needs to stay on the floor to do it.
How far he gets will also shape what comes next. In the summer of 2025, before he arrived at Virginia, De Ridder worked out for the Houston Rockets and the Boston Celtics, and both told him they wanted to see him in college first so they could compare him with other prospects, he told Sporza. This June, he told the same outlet that he was closer to the NBA than ever. He turns 24 in January, and his age will come up in every draft conversation this year. Brogdon, who turned 23 during his final season at Virginia, went 36th in the 2016 draft and won NBA Rookie of the Year. Age did not define Brogdon, and it does not have to define De Ridder.
Virginia starts the season Nov. 3 against Drexel at John Paul Jones Arena. A year ago, De Ridder was not sure his game would fit in college basketball. Now, Virginia’s season depends on how far he can take it.
“After the season, I have to get a job somewhere,” De Ridder told VirginiaSports.com with a smile in September, “so it’s kind of a pressure on me.”
However, for at lease one more year, De Ridder no longer sounds like a player wondering whether he belongs. “I worked my butt off this summer,” he said. “So I feel more comfortable with everything. I’m just excited for myself, too. I’m ready.”