Virginia currently sits at 18th in the most recent AP Poll and inside the top 20 at KenPom and BartTorvik, but the Cavaliers don’t seem to be mentioned much at all on a national scale. Led by first-year head coach Ryan Odom, who knows a thing or two about coming off the radar and winning NCAA Tournament games (see: UMBC vs Virginia, 2018), the Cavaliers are well-suited to rise in February and make a run in March. Virginia has nine players who each play at least 16 minutes per game, none of whom were teammates at this time last year, leading me to believe there’s still plenty of room to grow.

With a healthy balance of experience and talent, this Virginia core has a record of 18-3 heading into February, but it feels as if its best basketball is yet to come. The Cavaliers have proved they can win away from home, boasting an 8-2 record away from John Paul Jones Arena, including true road wins over Louisville, NC State, Texas, and SMU, all of which are currently projected to reach the NCAA Tournament per Bracket Matrix. After falling to North Carolina at home on Jan. 24, the Cavaliers have limped into February with a pair of wins over Notre Dame and Boston College, trailing at half in each game before coming back to win. This three-game stretch has scared many away from this Virginia team, but the road success and the fact that the team’s best three-point shooter is just getting healthy again leads me to believe the Cavaliers will be on an up-trend for all of February.

Jacari White is Virginia’s top outside threat, hitting 30 of his 60 attempts in November and December before missing five games due to injury. In a four-game stretch as the calendar turned from November to December, White averaged 15 points per game and knocked down 17-of-23 attempts from behind the arc. In his first four games back in the rotation, White scored just ten points total and just 2-of-8 from three. In the comeback victory over Boston College, White finished with eight points and shot 2-of-3 from three, including a 25-footer with just under ten minutes to play that put the Cavaliers up for good. If Virginia can get its sniper back to form, it opens it up that much more inside for Thijs de Ridder, the nation’s least talked about All-American candidate.

The Belgian freshman burst onto the scene as soon as he arrived in Charlottesville, scoring 20 or more points in four of his first five collegiate games. de Ridder hasn’t shown any signs of stopping, recently going for a career-high 32 points as Virginia came back from down 19 to beat Notre Dame in double overtime. A talented scorer inside and out, de Ridder has been Virginia’s most consistent player in his rookie year, averaging 17 ppg on 54/36/70 splits, and is the main face of a top 20 offense in the nation. de Ridder is also a part of a three-headed monster when it comes to creating second chances, combining with Johann Grunloh and Ugonna Onyenso to headline the nation’s third most effective team on the offensive glass. This trio cleans up the glass effectively and shuts down lanes inside defensively, as Virginia ranks inside the top ten nationally in two-point percentage defensively.

Back into the guard room, Malik Thomas and Chance Mallory are two players who can change the game in an instant, key to winning a game or two you shouldn’t in March. Thomas, the leading scorer at San Francisco last season, has settled into the Robin role next to de Ridder, but has still taken over games when needed to at times this season. Thomas led the Cavaliers in points and rebounds when he went for a 23-point, 11-rebound double-double on the road in a win over SMU, knocking down six three-pointers in the process.

Mallory was thought of in the offseason as a fun addition that could be useful down the road for Virginia, a 5-10 four-star freshman who would be competing with a handful of veterans in the backcourt for minutes. From the get-go, Mallory has proved he’d be a valuable piece for however long he’s at UVA, playing 20 minutes or more in every game this season off the bench. Second on the team in assists at 3.5 apg and first in steals with 39 through 21 games, Mallory is an impactful player on both sides of the ball, and I can already picture a late steal-and-score to salt away a game for Virginia at some point in March.

Add in Dallin Hall, a 23-year-old senior who appeared in 100 games for BYU across three seasons before arriving in Charlottesville, and you have a backcourt that is both dynamic and stable, crucial for winning big games in March. Elsewhere in the rotation are Sam Lewis and Devin Tillis, two experienced veterans, with Lewis being a guy who can space the floor out and light it up from deep, and Tillis being able to bruise it up inside in his minutes off the bench. With a handful of options inside and a plethora of shooters outside, this Virginia team has all the makings of a 4-5 seed that takes out one of the nation’s best in the Sweet 16.

Depending on your current view of Louisville, Virginia may or may not have its “signature” win already, but by the time that comes, the hype train will be far from the station. When it’s all said and done, I’d be surprised if this Virginia team wasn’t still kicking in the last weekend of March, and I wouldn’t be shocked if the Cavaliers were one of four teams in Indianapolis in the first weekend of April.