Round Robin: Setting the Stage for the ACC Women's Basketball Tournament

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The ACC Women's Basketball Tournament has arrived. Virginia is the No. 10 seed and will take on No. 15 seed Pitt in the first round on Wednesday at 3:30pm ET (ACCN) in Greensboro, North Carolina. As the Cavaliers try to pick up their first ACC Tournament win since 2019, and maybe go on a run in Greensboro, three members of the Virginia Cavaliers On SI writing staff - Val Prochaska, Luke Lamberson, and Matt Newton - are going to answer some questions to help preview the 2025 ACC Women's Basketball Tournament.

The Virginia women went 8-10 in the ACC this year, a game better than last year’s 7-11 record, but there were more statement wins last year: Virginia Tech, Florida State and Louisville. There was even a statement “loss” by just three points to LSU. This year there is just one, Sunday’s win at UNC. Is this year’s version better or worse than last year?

Val: This team is not better than last year’s team.  It’s thin.  It looks like Coach Agugua-Hamilton has lost faith in Casey Valenti-Paea and Taylor Lauterbach, and it looks like she’s going to run out just six players.  Latasha Lattimore is having a great year, but even she can’t replace the production of Cam Taylor, Sam Brunelle and London Clarkson.  Three-point percentage, free throw percentage, rebounds, assists are all down from last year.

But… the growth in Kymora Johnson’s game means that the team can be more dangerous.  The counting stats -- points, rebounds, assists -- are all up this year, but more importantly she’s made the leap in terms of her game management.  Last year, she was the point guard with the ball in her hands, whereas this year she’s become the coach on the court.  Last year, she had to share leadership with Taylor and Brunelle, each with healthy egos of their own.  This year the team is totally her own.  

Luke: This question was made easier by the Wahoos' performance in Chapel Hill on Sunday. Despite this, the story of both seasons has been the Hoos' inconsistency. At times, UVA looks like a top 25 team as they go blow for blow with UNC, Duke, NC State, and Louisville. Unfortunately, those top showings did not amount to as many wins this season as it did last. However, bad losses have plagued the Cavaliers. This year it was mostly in the non-conference, as the disastrous trip to Puerto Rico eliminated all margin for error for the NCAA Tournament. However, this season, UVA has found consistency in the ACC that they were unable to find last year. The Hoos were 6-2 this season against teams that finished below them in the ACC standings. For this reason, I give the nod to this season.

UVA’s guard play has been spectacular, led by Mo Johnson. Although the Hoos have dearly missed Cam Taylor’s interior presence, Latasha Lattimore has served as a great option on both ends of the court. I firmly believe that if this team could have another shot at a few of their non-conference losses and gotten a couple more bounces against their Quad 1 opponents, they would be in the bubble conversation. Additionally, if this year’s team can advance to Thursday or beyond in the ACC Tournament, I think the answer is clear as Coach Mox has failed to win an ACC tournament game so far in her young tenure.

Matt: Val makes a great point about the depth. The rotation has tightened to six players and that could place a ceiling on how far the Cavaliers can go in a tournament where there is a game every day as long as they are winning. Last year's Virginia team went eight or nine players deep every game and had 12 players who appeared in at least 20 games. But with that said, I agree with Luke that our perception of this team in terms of overall success can change drastically if Coach Mox's squad ends the drought and wins a couple of games at the ACC Tournament.

What is the biggest strength of this team? What is this team going to hang its hat on if it is to win two or three games in the ACC Tournament?

Val: Virginia’s not winning three games because that would mean knocking off Notre Dame in the quarterfinals.  

The women will be buoyed by the confidence that comes with having beaten UNC on their home court on Senior Day.  This team doesn’t give up, and given the minutes the women are logging, they don’t seem to tire.  This team has the intangibles, to be frank, of a much better team.  If Paris Clark’s recent resurgence from deep translates to postseason play, this team could surprise.

Luke: Mo Johnson. Obviously, Mo has been this team’s leader for nearly her entire time on Grounds, but over the last few games she has taken her output to the next level. Despite slow scoring starts against SMU and UNC, she found ways to still orchestrate the offense until her shots started falling. I anticipate that UVA will find themselves in some close games down the stretch in Greensboro and it will be critical for Mo to lead her team to a victory as she did against UNC. Johnson is nearly averaging a triple-double in her last four performances and it will take efforts like these for UVA to make a surprise run into the second half of the tournament this week. There are very few times that Mo Johnson is not the best player on the court and it will be vital for UVA to exploit those matchups to produce wins this week.

Matt: Since Luke took Kymora Johnson for his answer, I'll go with Latasha Lattimore, and her lightning fast first step that even the most versatile forwards can't keep up with, as my answer for the biggest strength of the team. While the statement "Virginia goes as Kymora Johnson goes" is accurate considering that she has the ball in her hands on every possession and has handled that burden exceptionally, recently it seems that the Cavaliers are going as Latasha Lattimore goes. Let's take the last eight games - or the entire month of February - as a reasonable sample set. In those eight games, Lattimore has scored in double figures five times and has been held to single digits three times. Virginia's record in that stretch when Lattimore scores in double figures was 5-0 and the Cavaliers were 0-3 when she doesn't get there. If Lattimore is "off" or gets into foul trouble, the Hoos are in trouble. But when she's on, they're pretty hard to beat. Lattimore needs to be on her A-Game if Virginia is going to make a run in Greensboro.

Conversely, what is the team’s biggest weakness?

Val: Coach Mox is always talking about how she wants her team to get out and run and push the ball in transition.  But shockingly, this team is really bad at it.  Who knows, maybe it’s something in the water.  Tony Bennett famously wanted to NOT run, and yet, the women, who do want to run, are equally ineffective.  I’m sure that I haven’t seen more than five real outlet passes all season, and maybe the ball crosses midcourt on a pass no more than once per game.  The spacing on the break is that of a good high school team.  The team has made some progress in not going coast-to-coast only to careen into a 1 v 2 or 1 v 3 collision at the rim, but every team playing on the second day of the tournament likely runs the break better than they do.  

Luke: Offensive rebounding. Regular readers of my takeaways will know that I mention this all the time, but I mention it because it is so critical. UVA lacks a true interior presence and it has cost them in many close games this season. In a few ranked matchups this season, UVA has been beaten by second chance points and offensive rebounds in key moments. The ACC is a very talented league and stopping teams like Notre Dame and NC State is already very difficult, but especially when you give them 15 extra opportunities on the offensive end. When UVA plays their best basketball, they prevent offensive boards. For example, after allowing 10 offensive rebounds to UNC in the first half, they limited it to only three in the second half and mounted a large comeback to secure a huge win. Avoiding those stretches where teams get second, third, and even fourth opportunities to score will be what determines UVA’s results this week.

Matt: Coach Mox hates when I ask about it, but it's the low-hanging fruit and I'm going to have to take it. Three-point shooting is Virginia's biggest weakness. The Cavaliers rank 189th in the country in three-point shooting at 31.0% as a team and 15th in the ACC out of 18 teams. But those three teams that shot worse from three than UVA are, not coincidentally, the three teams that failed to qualify for the ACC Tournament, so the Hoos are the worst perimeter shooting team in the tournament field. No Cavalier is shooting 40% from beyond the arc and Kymora Johnson is the only one who's close at 38.2%. Virginia can sometimes overcome a cold shooting game, as the Hoos did when they shot 5/26 from three at SMU but still came away with the win. But the lack of consistency in that area has the potential to trip UVA up at any moment.

Virginia is playing Pitt in the first game. What’s your prediction?

Val: Virginia is going to win this one.  Pitt is seriously bad and the only reason the Panthers are going to the ACC Tournament in the first place is that they were the lucky team that got to play SMU twice.

Virginia will also be free of the Wake Forest Curse this year.  For the last three years, Virginia and Wake have been matched up together on the first day of the tournament, and each of the last three years, Wake has sent Virginia packing.  Last year Matt and I were so desperate to break the curse, that we didn’t even mention the previous two years in our ACC tourney preview.  Well, Wake is sitting at home this year and Virginia will advance.  Book it.

Luke: I predict the Hoos will come away with a victory. The last time these two teams met, Mo Johnson made triple-double history and Latasha Lattimore completely dominated. Pitt will need to make serious adjustments to stop Johnson and Lattimore and I expect that they will. But a less memorable, yet critical, element of that game was Casey Valenti-Paea scoring a season high 12 points and providing a huge spark off the bench. In order to avoid another first round tournament exit, UVA will need to rely on output from everyone else on the team. Maybe Johnson and Lattimore will go off yet again, but I predict that a third player, perhaps Valenti-Paea again, will be instrumental in UVA advancing to Thursday.

Matt: I agree that Virginia will win and UVA should hope that it won't require another historic triple double from Johnson and another 30-point showing from Lattimore. The threat of another takeover game from Lattimore should elicit a defensive response from Pitt that should open the floor up considerably for Virginia's offense. If the Cavaliers move the ball like they did against North Carolina, there should be ample opportunities for open threes and layups. Lattimore needs to stay out of foul trouble, but if she does, then I think Virginia should win this one by double-digits.

Val is going down to Greensboro, NC for the entire tournament. Who should he keep an eye on?

Val: That’s right, I am.  I’ll be bringing the sights and sounds of all 14 games, making this as immersive an experience as you can get on your phone.  Check back here each day for my tournament play-by-play.

I’m looking for Boston College to knock off Syracuse in the tournament’s opening game.  Each of the three years year I’ve been coming down, BC has played in the most interesting games of the early rounds.  UNC’s Maria Gakdeng and Duke’s Taina Mair were once at BC before transferring away.  It’s a big case of what-could-have-been had they stayed.  

I’ll also be watching Notre Dame’s Sonia Citron, my favorite non-Virginia player the past three years in the ACC.  Olivia Miles and Hannah Hidalgo rightly get a lot of press, but Citron is almost an afterthought and she’s going to be a first-round draft pick.  Citron is also the subject of my favorite sports pic in recent years.

Sam Upshaw Jr./Courier Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK

Another reason to love Sonia Citron:  her brother, William, is a Wahoo.  William was a three-year starter on the men's soccer team.  I never connected the dots…

Luke: Ta'Niya Latson from Florida State. After scoring 20+ points in seven straight games, she played her worst game of the season on Sunday against Duke, shooting 3/21 from the floor. Latson leads the nation in points per game with 25.4 and is the primary reason that FSU earned a double bye in the ACC Tournament. Latson is an incredibly talented player and she will not have two poor performances in a row. I expect her to come out with a vengeance in their first game on Friday and I expect it to be must-see TV.

Matt: Olivia Miles from Notre Dame. It's been two years since we last saw Miles play in the ACC Tournament, as she tore her ACL in the regular season finale of the 2022-2023 season and missed the entire 2023-2024 campaign. The Fighting Irish won the tournament title without Miles last year. I expect that Miles, who finished this regular season ninth in the ACC in scoring (16.5 ppg) and tied for first with UVA's Kymora Johnson in assists (5.9 apg) will be extra motivated to play well to help the Irish attempt to defend their tournament crown.

Who is going to win it all?

Val: Notre Dame is easily the best team in the ACC.  When Sonia Citron is the third best player on your team, you should be thinking national championship.  Maddy Westbeld is back for the Fighting Irish, and she looks to be moving comfortably, but something’s off; she ain’t the player she was last year.  And their defense isn’t good.  Hidalgo is a great on-ball defender, and she can stalk the passing lanes, but she loses her man frequently.  I like Liatu King, and she can score with any big, but she’s not much of a defensive presence.

I’d like FSU as my dark horse, but Ta’Niya Latson missed two games and hasn’t been herself since returning.  Fighting for a double-bye on the last Sunday, she had a 3/21 night.  She and Makayla Timpson are the ACC’s best inside-out combo partnership, but only if Latson is ready to go.

So, by process of elimination, that leaves NC State.  Guard play, be it men or women, rules in post-season play, and NC State has the guards.  Zoe Brooks, Aziaha James, Saniya Rivers and even Madison Hayes (though she’s more of a wing) can match up with any trio in the country.  You also have to consider that NC State’s tournament games will be home games.  For this tournament, NC State travels better than any other fan base, easily eclipsing fellow state programs Wake Forest, Duke and UNC. Louisville and Notre Dame will have vocal cheering sections, but it will be nothing like NC State. Their fans are coming from just an hour away.

NC State to win it all.

Luke: Despite dropping two games down the stretch, I still pick Notre Dame to cut down the net on Sunday. Led by Hannah Hidalgo, the Irish have looked dominant all year, only losing two games in the Cayman Islands before their double OT loss to NC State and loss to FSU last week. Notre Dame got back on track Sunday, beating a very talented Louisville team easily and I expect them to roll into the final. I think they get revenge on NC State in the championship game and earn a #1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

Matt: The betting favorites ought to be Notre Dame and NC State, but if North Carolina gets Alyssa Ustby and Reniya Kelly back from injury, which UNC head coach Courtney Banghart said was a "good possibility" in Monday's pre-ACC Tournament press conference, then I wouldn't count out the Tar Heels bouncing back from their losses to Duke and Virginia to end the regular season by going on a big run in Greensboro. If Ustby and Kelly play and look like themselves, UNC is my pick to win it.

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