Virginia Looking Out West in 2010-2011

The Virginia Cavaliers have a nice little non-conference schedule this year. I wouldn’t call it a cupcake schedule, it won’t be the most challenge of the ACC schools. In fact, it’s a pretty perfect schedule for a young team still trying to figure itself out.

VIRGINIA 2010-2011 SCHEDULE

The season opens with William & Mary (who you should never sleep on), followed by an easy one against USC State. Next, they make a stopover at Palo Alto, California to take on an improved Stanford them.

The Cavaliers then head to Hawaii to participate in the Maui Invitational. This year’s group has some talented teams, including Connecticut, Michigan State, Oklahoma and Michigan State. Virginia will open as an underdog against the Washington Huskies. If they can find away to win, they’ll face the winner of the Kentucky/Oklahoma game.

Only five days after their final game in Maui, Virginia heads to Minnesota for the ACC/Big Ten Challenge.

They’ll have one ACC game on the road against what should be a ranked Virginia Tech team.

This game will end basically what amounts to a 20-day road trip, but will follow that up with an eight-game home stand. In fact, the next time Virginia plays a road game will be at Duke, January 15. That’s 41 days. Wow.

During that home stand, they do have some cake (Radford, Seattle, Howard), but they also have some BCS schools coming in, including Oregon, Iowa State and LSU.

Looking over that non-conference schedule, Virginia could be looking at a 9-6 or 8-7 start to the season. Then the fun begins.

The ACC re-starts again with back-to-back games against North Carolina and Duke. They will only face Carolina once, but Duke twice.