Inclined never to utter the phrase “no-hitter” as one is unfolding? If so, and if the University of Virginia is your sports obsession, avert your eyes.
The Cavaliers are tracking toward a landmark 2025-26 athletics year.
I know, I know. Superstition holds that the moment someone forecasts a sports milestone, catastrophe soon follows.
An athlete gets the yips, a coach brain-cramps in a tense moment and/or a referee butchers a crucial call.
But UVA’s opportunity here is real, and given the Cavaliers’ rich and recent history of winning NCAA team championships, that’s saying something.
Virginia did not win a national title in the just-completed fall seasons. But thanks to top-25 years in football, field hockey, men’s and women’s cross country and men’s and women’s soccer, the Cavaliers exited the fall third in the Directors’ Cup all-sports standings, part of the ACC’s top-10 dominance — North Carolina and Stanford are Nos. 1-2, Notre Dame No. 5, and Wake Forest and Duke Nos. 8-9.
UVA’s best Directors’ Cup finish was third in 2009-10, when the Cavaliers won national titles in men’s soccer and women’s rowing. But football and men’s basketball were, to be charitable, not great.
The football team went 3-9 in Al Groh’s final year as coach, the basketball squad 15-16 in Tony Bennett’s debut season leading the program. Their combined ACC record was 7-17.
Fast forward to 2025-26. Tony Elliott’s football squad won a school-record 11 games and finished atop the regular-season conference standings at 7-1. Moreover, Virginia was No. 16 in the end-of-season Associated Press poll, its best since 1995.
David Teel: Program veterans essential to UVA’s historic football season
Entering Saturday’s late game against Ohio State in Nashville, men’s basketball, under first-year coach Ryan Odom, is 21-3 overall, 10-2 in the ACC and 15th in the AP poll.
Virginia is among six schools — Vanderbilt, BYU, Michigan, Houston and Texas Tech are the others — that are top-25 in basketball this week and closed the football season ranked.
More context: Entering Saturday, UVA’s 32-6 combined football and hoops record trails only Houston’s 31-5 and Michigan’s 32-5.
If Odom’s bunch finishes the season ranked, this will mark only the second academic year in which the Cavaliers had top-25 seasons in football and men’s basketball. The first, and to date only, was 1994-95.
Led by the ACC’s stingiest defense — Ronde Barber intercepted eight passes and was the league’s Rookie of the Year — George Welsh’s football team went 9-3, won at No. 14 Virginia Tech, defeated Texas Christian in the Independence Bowl and finished 15th in the AP poll.
Headlined by Junior Burrough, Harold Deane and Cory Alexander, Jeff Jones’ basketball group was even better. The 25-9 Cavaliers shared the ACC regular-season title with Wake Forest (Tim Duncan and Randolph Childress), North Carolina (Jerry Stackhouse and Rasheed Wallace) and Maryland (Maury High’s Joe Smith) and advanced to the NCAA Tournament’s Elite Eight, where they fell to defending national champion Arkansas.
That year, 1994-95, marked the second edition of the Directors’ Cup, a metric that has flattered Virginia since its inception. Never has UVA placed outside the top 30, and this year figures to be its 11th among the top 10.
At the ACC Championships, only 18 swimmers can travel. For most programs, filling those 18 spots with scoring athletes is an aspiration, yet the Cavaliers routinely have more than 18 who are deserving. @aimeecrosbie11 details a good problem to have: https://t.co/hM1x3xCIjY
— Cavalier Daily Sports (@CavDailySports) February 14, 2026
Consider the Cavaliers’ Directors’ Cup potential as winter seasons hit overdrive and spring sports percolate.
With anchors such as Emma Weber, Leah Hayes, Katie Grimes, Claire Curzan, Aimee Canny, Sara Curtis and Anna Moesch, UVA women’s swimming has stockpiled unrivaled depth and is favored to win a record sixth consecutive national title, all under Todd DeSorbo.
Men’s golf placed second to Oklahoma State at last spring’s NCAA championship, and with the college game’s top player in Ben James, Bowen Sargent’s Cavaliers figure to contend again.
Virginia’s Ben James, shown hitting a tee shot during last year’s NCAA golf tournament, is the top-ranked men’s player right now. The Cavaliers finished as NCAA runner-up last season. (Stew Milne/AP)
And that’s just the start.
Despite a loss at No. 2 Ohio State last Saturday, Virginia’s top-ranked men’s tennis team appears capable of chasing a seventh national title. Men’s indoor track, men’s and women’s lacrosse, baseball, softball, rowing and women’s tennis also grace the top 25.
While many of Virginia’s head coaches predate her, Cavaliers athletic director Carla Williams hired Elliott, Odom, baseball’s Chris Pollard, track’s Vin Lananna and rowing’s Wes Ng, each of whom has his program trending upward.
But winning the Directors’ Cup will be a chore for UVA.
North Carolina claimed the first in 1993-94 and hasn’t closed lower than 15th in 27 years. A third-place finish last year was Stanford’s worst ever in a competition it has won 26 times, most recently in 2022-23.
Crazier still: Dating to 1976-77, the Cardinal are striving to make this their 50th consecutive academic year with at least one national title, staggering excellence that speaks to their unrivaled 137 all-time championships.
Excluding pandemic-abbreviated 2019-20, when the NCAA canceled winter and spring championships, Virginia’s national-title streak is six years. Bank on the Cavaliers, with 35 NCAA championships in their history, extending the run to seven years this winter or spring, and perhaps seriously challenging for their first Directors’ Cup crown.
Merely mentioning the possibility doesn’t jinx it.
Promise.
David Teel, david.teel@virginiamedia.com
