Thijs De Ridder filled out brackets overseas. Now he's leading Virginia's March Madness run PHILADELPHIA — Before Virginia men’s basketball was named the No. 3 seed in the Midwest Region of the Men’s NCAA Tournament on Selection Sunday, Thijs De Ridder never really knew what March Madness was. “Not much,” De Ridder told USA TODAY Sports on Thursday. You can’t necessarily blame him: The Cavaliers’ 6-foot-9, 238-pound forward was playing professionally for Bilbao Basket in the Liga ACB league, the top professional basketball division of the Spanish basketball league, just last season. “When I was 17 and younger, I thought it was another tournament like others. I did some brackets when I was younger, but that was just for fun,” De Ridder said. It’s what makes the 23-year-old freshman from Brasschaat, Belgium excited to play in Virginia’s first-round game against No. 14 seed Wright State. “Every time there was an American guy on my team overseas, they always talked about March Madness,” De Ridder said. “Now that I’m here, it’s such an organization, and it just made me really excited to play here. Hopefully, we can do some great stuff.” De Ridder’s path to Virginia is an interesting one. “The story is, I happened to be in Italy looking at another kid and was meeting with his agent, but not about Thijs. It was about another kid,” Virginia associate head coach Griff Aldrich told USA TODAY Sports. “Thijs came to mind, and it became apparent that he was open, so we said, ‘Hey, we were very interested in him,’ and it snowballed to Thijs.” Aldrich mentioned De Ridder wasn’t playing in Italy at the time he was visiting, but the 6-foot-9 forward matched Virginia’s values while bringing experience and physicality to the court. “He competed at a very high level.#virginia #march_madness #thijs_de_ridder #bilbao_basket #griff_aldrich
