Roundtable: Previewing the 2024 ACC Women's Basketball Tournament
Postseason has officially arrived for Virginia women's basketball. Winners of five of their final seven games to end the regular season with a 15-14 overall record, the Cavaliers will look to carry that momentum into this week's ACC Women's Basketball Tournament in Greensboro.
UVA has earned the No. 11 seed in the bracket and will take on No. 14 seed Wake Forest in the first round on Wednesday at 6:30pm at Greensboro Coliseum. The winner of that game will advance to take on No. 6 seed Florida State on Thursday, with the winner of that second round matchup advancing to Friday's quarterfinals to battle No. 3 seed Syracuse.
See the full bracket for the 2024 ACC Women's Basketball Tournament below:
2024 ACC Women's Basketball Tournament Bracket
Now that we have the bracket and schedule, Matt and Val are here to answer some questions and break down the key storylines for Virginia and the conference as a whole for the 2024 ACC Women's Basketball Tournament.
1. The bracket has been set and Virginia claims the No. 11 seed. The Cavaliers play Wake Forest on Wednesday, March 6th in the third game of the day. Wake is 2-14 in the ACC and has the No. 14 seed. Is this game going to be a cake walk for Virginia?
Val: Yes. Well, no. Every game has to be played and favored teams that don’t honor their opponents frequently end up looking foolish. If Virginia, flush off their upset of Virginia Tech and looking ahead to Florida State, doesn’t take Wake Forest seriously, UVa will go home early.
Wake Forest is the home team and presumably doesn’t have to travel, so they garner the usual advantages that come from being able to sleep in their own beds. But this team is dire, having only won a pair of ACC games and six games overall. For the two previous seasons, Wake had Jewel Spear leading the attack. Desperate to win, she made good use of the portal. A decent backcourt remains, Kaia Harrison at the point and Elise Williams at the 2. At the ACC tournament last year, Williams was one of the more impressive performers as she had primary ball-handling duties with Harrison out. Williams is a baller, but she doesn’t have enough help.
One scary note: Three of their six wins were against teams that beat Virginia: Wofford, Pittsburgh and Georgia Tech.
Matt: If Virginia plays with the same intensity, aggressiveness, and physicality as the Virginia Tech game on Sunday, then I’d say yes, this will be a cake walk win. And that would be the ideal outcome considering the Cavaliers can play themselves into consideration for the NCAA Tournament if they make a lengthy run in Greensboro. But playing every single day against increasingly challenging opponents makes that a tall task, so getting a relatively “easy” win against Wake Forest in the first round on Wednesday would be huge.
With that said, I don’t think it’s a certainty (or even a strong likelihood) that the Cavaliers cruise past the Demon Deacons, mainly for the fact that the Cavaliers have rarely cruised past anyone this season. Virginia has two double digit wins in the last two months against North Carolina and Miami and even those games were close in the fourth quarter until UVA pulled away. Virginia’s last “comfortable” win was a 26-point blowout over Fordham on December 21st. It would be good for Virginia to put this one away early and that would also show that perhaps UVA is sustaining the momentum from the Virginia Tech win, but I’m not sure that’s the most likely outcome for Wednesday’s game.
2. Looking ahead at the rest of the bracket, how far can Virginia go?
Val: Virginia can go as far as Camryn Taylor allows Virginia to go. She’s the X-factor because she can’t be trusted to keep herself on the floor. While I disagree with the two-fouls-makes-you-sit formula that Coach Agugua-Hamilton prefers, with Taylor, it’s completely reasonable. Despite playing 125+ games in her career, she hasn’t learned how not to foul. And if she has to sit for five-minute (or more) chunks of time, Virginia doesn’t have an interior game.
The team has a lot going for it. The Cavaliers are the second-best free throw shooting team in the conference, so they can put up points late when the game is devolving into fouls. The team is the second-best rebounding team in the ACC (including being second best on the offensive glass,) and they are the third best team in assists. Virginia has improved mightily from beyond the arc, going from being really, really poor to just middle of the road. Taylor can score points in bunches and in any other non-Hannah Hidalgo kind of year, Kymora Johnson would be ACC Freshman of the Year. And lastly, Virginia can put a sucky quarter or half behind them and fight down to the wire. Virginia absolutely could win three games and make it to Championship Weekend. It all depends on Cam.
Matt: I agree that Virginia’s success will largely depend on Camryn Taylor’s ability to stay on the floor as well as the team’s continued effectiveness in rebounding and shooting from the free throw line and beyond the arc. I’d like to talk more about Kymora Johnson, though, because I think she could be just as important as Taylor if UVA is going to make a run this week.
Johnson no longer seems like a freshman (and hasn't for most of ACC play) and it seems she saves her best basketball for the biggest games and moments: 35 points in the win at Florida State, 25 points in the win over North Carolina, 18 points and six assists in the win at Louisville, and then 22-point and 21-point performances in the two games against Virginia Tech. Johnson is not fazed by any amount of pressure and her ability to, as she said on Sunday, play her game no matter what the stakes of the game are, makes her the player to watch as she tries to lead the Cavaliers on a run in her first time playing in the ACC Tournament. Virginia can beat any team in the ACC and can absolutely make it to the weekend’s semifinals or finals with Johnson playing her best basketball.
3. How many games does Virginia need to win to get into the NCAA Tournament?
Val: In looking at the ACC, I typically break the teams into tiers: the lowest tier is the six teams that have to play that first day of the tournament. The middle tier is teams seeded 5th through ninth, who get the single bye, and then the four top teams that receive the coveted double bye. I may have to adjust that thinking. Virginia is in the bottom group because they will play on Wednesday, yet Virginia’s record vs top 25 teams is, after the Virginia Tech victory, 4-8. The other five teams in the lower tier sport a combined 0-38 record against top 25 competition. Virginia clearly doesn’t fit the profile of a lower tier ACC team, but six teams have to play on that first day.
With the win against Tech, I would have thought that Virginia had a relatively easy path to the bubble: play Syracuse on Friday. This would mean beating Wake Forest in the first game and then Florida State in the second round.
But Charlie Creme – think the Joe Lunardi for the women’s set – said immediately after the Virginia Tech win that it didn’t make any difference. He has nine ACC teams in the NCAAs, the last of which is Miami, and that there really wasn’t anything any team could do to improve their situation. He must have been thinking of Virginia.
The NET is not particularly kind to Virginia. The Cavs have only three Quad I wins: Florida State, Louisville and now Virginia Tech. That shiny victory over UNC? Well, that was at home and is now considered a Quad II win. Miami, on the other hand, has NC State and Duke, which are impressive, but more importantly, the NET favors away wins at Mississippi State and Georgia Tech more than UNC at home. The fact that Virginia beat Miami matters very little for the NET, or the RPI for that matter.
As Virginia has won 5 of their last 7 games, the NET has only improved from 71 to 60. Virginia is going to have to beat Syracuse.
Matt: Val, I’m going to have to concur with you that it seems the magic number is three for the Cavaliers to really have a chance at earning an at-large bid on Selection Sunday. Virginia has played one of the toughest schedules in the country this season and have racked up some impressive wins along the way, but it’s the bad losses to bad teams - Wofford, Pittsburgh, and Clemson - that are still weighing down this team’s resume, particularly in the NET rankings. Wins over Wake Forest and Florida State would move Virginia's overall record to 17-14, but I don’t think they will move the needle enough for UVA to make the cut. If the Cavaliers can beat the Seminoles for a second time and earn another shot at Syracuse in the quarterfinals, that game could be essentially a play-in game for the NCAA Tournament for Virginia.
4. Overall prediction for the ACC Tournament: who's going to win it all, sleeper team, etc.
Val: Without knowing the status of Liz Kitley’s injury, I would have said that the tournament is Virginia Tech’s to lose. I don’t think the Hokies have as much talent as last year – man o man, I really liked Kayana Traylor’s play – but Liz Kitley and Georgia Amoore are more effective this year than last. Simply put, Tech’s two best players have gotten better, which is how they clinched the regular season with two games to spare.
Lots of people, myself included, predicted that NC State would take a real step back this year, but the growth of River Baldwin and Saniya Rivers has kept the Wolfpack in the top 10 most of the year.
If there is a team to challenge Virginia Tech, it would probably be Notre Dame. Neither team is deep, but if Notre Dame’s Sonia Citron can rediscover her late-season form from last year, the Fighting Irish are the only team with three players who can off for 20 points on any given night. Citron, Maddy Westbeld and Hannah Hidalgo combined for 63 points in knocking off Virginia Tech midweek.
The other team that no one wants to face right now would be Duke. Despite losing Celeste Taylor, Duke’s defense is better this year, and it’s one that would make Tony Bennett proud. The Blue Devils have six different players who have led the team in scoring this year. They can hit you from any vector on the court.
Louisville and UNC are my two candidates for early tournament flameouts. Not uncoincidentally, Virginia handled both the Cardinals and Tar Heels pretty easily.
Matt: Virginia Tech would be my pick to repeat as ACC Tournament Champions if Liz Kitley is back and relatively healthy - we can only speculate on her condition after suffering that knee injury at Virginia as Kenny Brooks did not have an update on her status in the ACC Coaches Zoom presser on Monday. The Hokies obviously have their sights set on a return trip to the Final Four, so I’d think Coach Brooks and company would strongly consider holding Kitley out for the ACC Tournament to get her as close to 100% as possible by the time the NCAA Tournament begins.
Even without Kitley, Virginia Tech is still one of the top contenders to win the title - we saw on Sunday how much damage Georgia Amoore can do even without her Pick and Roll partner. I’d say Notre Dame or NC State have the next best shot, but don’t sleep on No. 3 seed Syracuse. The Orange lost two of their last three games to end the regular season, but sometimes losses like that can serve as an opportunity for a hard reset. Maybe that’s just what Dyaisha Fair and company needed in order to make a run in Greensboro.
5. And to close our preview of the tournament, let’s look at the All-ACC teams. They will be announced during the tournament, but who do you have?
Val: Liz Kitley, Virginia Tech – Last year I beat the drum loudly for Georgia Amoore as being the best player on Tech. Sure, Kitley was reigning Player of the Year, but the ball was always in Amoore’s hands. Amoore would prove me correct by setting the record for most threes in the tournament with 14 and being named Player of the Tournament. And while there may be some voter fatigue facing Kitley’s quest to be the three-time ACC Player of the Year, she’s just better this year. She’s posting career highs of 22.9 points and 11.5 rebounds, both of which are markedly better than last year.
Hannah Hidalgo, Notre Dame – Hidalgo has taken the ACC by storm this year and she has actually made people forget about Olivia Miles, Notre Dame’s “other” point guard who has been out all year, and of whom I wrote of last year as being the most riveting player in the ACC. In addition to Miles’ absence, Sonia Citron missed 10 games to start the season and hasn’t been the same player as in years past. And yet, here’s Notre Dame, fresh off victories over the Hokies and Louisville, occupying the No. 4 seed for the tournament. That’s on Hidalgo.
Dyaisha Fair, Syracuse – Lost in the Caitlyn Clark hoopla as she chased down Kelsey Plum’s all-time NCAA scoring record, is Fair’s journey up the standings. Fair is now the fifth all-time scorer having passed Brittney Griner two weeks ago. Fair could very well be the smallest player in the league, but since she rarely fouls, she’s able to play virtually every minute, leading the ACC in minutes.
Georgia Amoore, Virginia Tech – Just as I was writing that Amoore’s long-range shooting is down this year, she goes and has a career night against Virginia. Her assists are up (she leads the ACC with over 7 a game, second nationally to Caitlyn Clark) as is her fitness. Amoore may be the fittest player in the ACC as she frequently looks faster at the end of games than she does at the beginning.
Ta’Niya Latson, Florida State – Latson’s scoring is down this year but in its place, Latson has become a much more effective floor general. Sara Bejedi, O’Mariah Gordon and Makayla Timpson are all having career years with Latson distributing at her current level.
2nd Team
Maddy Westbeld, Notre Dame
Kymora Johnson, Virginia
Aziaha James, NC State
Reigan Richardson, Duke
Amari Robinson, Clemson
Matt: I’m not going to spend too much time litigating All-ACC teams, as mine look very similar to yours, Val, especially the First Team. For the Second Team, I’d give a nod to Pitt’s Liatu King (perhaps over Clemson’s Amari Robinson), as she is fifth in the ACC in scoring and second only to Liz Kitley in rebounding, joining Kitley as the only two players in the conference averaging a double-double. Florida State’s Makayla Timpson just misses the cut for Second Team as well, evidence of the incredible depth of talent in this conference.
Val: And that’s a wrap. So Matt and I are in agreement that the Hoos will have to beat Syracuse on Friday and make it to the weekend. To do so, they’ll have to figure out how to stop Dyaisha Fair, a challenge they’ve failed to do in both meetings over the last two years.
I will let you know, though, as for the second time, I am heading down to Greensboro, North Carolina for the ACC Women’s Tournament. I will bring you the sights and sounds of the entire tournament, as well as a play-by-play of all 14 games. Last year Virginia was barely even a spectator as they lost in the very first game of the tournament. They should be around a little longer to enjoy the festivities this time around. Wahoowa!
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