Cavaliers Now

The Plus/Minus: Virginia Women’s Basketball Falls Late to Duke

It was a tale of two halves: Virginia won the first half before tiring, and succumbing, to Duke in the second, 60-55.
Val Prochaska|
Virginia Athletic

Mid-week Duke was involved in a rock fight with UNC: only twice in the game’s four quarters did either team score more than 10 points.  For good measure, the two teams combined to go 6/25 from deep and 33/121 overall.  Duke had been down 16 points in the third quarter, only to storm back and force overtime.  Does having that kind of experience help in subsequent games?  On the day, it surely seemed so as I’ll discuss below.

Minus

The Virginia Cavaliers held a 27-20 first half lead over the Duke Blue Devils, and they extended that lead to 10 points early in the third quarter.  But Duke’s full-court pressure wore Virginia out.  After scoring just 20 points in two quarters, Duke scored 19 and 21 points in each of the two subsequent quarters.  In the first half, Virginia’s eight turnovers were mostly of the dead-ball kind and Duke scored just four points off those turnovers.  In the second half, the nine Cavalier TOs yielded 10 points.

Minus

Duke pummeled Virginia on the glass, outrebounding the Cavaliers 44-29.  The numbers were even worse on the offensive glass as the Blue Devils held a 20-7 advantage.  Those numbers are eerily similar to the men’s futility on the boards vs Stanford on Saturday.  One testament to just how hard the Hoos play, even in defeat, is that Duke, despite those 22 offensive rebounds, only scored seven second-chance points.

Plus

Virginia brought the intensity.  The zone was active and the Cavaliers had five blocks in the first quarter, including this one by Latasha Lattimore. 

Virginia is third in the ACC in blocked shots with 5.13/game and would record 10 on the day.  Duke also only had two fast-break points in the first half, and I’m pretty sure Duke is the team that Coach Agugua-Hamilton would most like her team to play like.  In other words, they want to run, and in the first half, Virginia completely throttled Duke.

Read five takeaways from the game here.

Minus

Virginia wore down in the second half in the face of Duke’s full-court press.  It doesn’t help that Jillian Brown was lost for the season this summer, or that Yonta Vaughn has been out for the last six games, but Coach Mox is playing effectively just six players.  (RyLee Grays played just five minutes.)  Breona Hurd is battling illness and has laid goose eggs in each of the past two games.  Olivia McGhee played 40 minutes, Lattimore 37, and Kymora Johnson logged 39 minutes.  As the starters wore down, not only did the team lose their edge on defense, but too many offensive possessions were just Johnson and Paris Clark dribbling too much up top.  For the record, Duke’s Kara Lawson played eleven players nine minutes or more.

I admit I am at a loss.  In her two previous two years here, Coach Mox played 10 or 11 deep, including giving minutes to less effective players than Casey Valenti-Paea or Payton Dunbar.  Mox has a shorter bench these past six games than Tony Bennett ever played.

Minus

ESPN, on the eve of the season, listed their top 10 super sophomores headlined by USC’s Ju-Ju Watkins and Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo.  ESPN listed five honorable mentions including NC State’s Zoe Brooks and Duke’s Oluchi Okananwa.  Neither was as impactful as Kymora Johnson last year.  I would have thought that this would have provided perfect locker-room fodder/inspiration for Johnson when she first went toe-toe with Okananwa, but she was out-played on the day.  In just 26 minutes, Okananwa had 17 points and equaled Johnson’s production beyond the arc, in half the shots for good measure.  Okananwa was the architect of Duke’s comeback; she was too fast and too strong for the Cavaliers down the stretch.

Minus

This game echoed the men’s loss v Stanford in all the wrong ways.  There’s the rebounding margin, which led Duke, like Stanford before them, getting to hoist 15 more shots than then the Cavaliers.  A pair of fluke threes helped the Cardinal bury the men.  Duke’s Taina Mair, 0/7 from the field and 0/2 from deep, and actually afraid to take a shot in the fourth quarter, hit the three that gave Duke their first lead at 53-50 and then the final shot of the game to secure the 60-55 lead.

Plus

Virginia did put four players in double figures led by Lattimore and Johnson.  McGhee made half of Virginia’s six three-pointers and Edessa Noyan had this lovely, nothing-but-hustle offensive board and finish to allow Virginia to take a 43-39 lead into the fourth quarter.

Up Next:  Virginia travels down the road to Blacksburg to take on Virginia Tech on Thursday, January 16th.  Note the earlier tip-off, at 6:00pm.  The game is on the ACC Network Extra.

More UVA Women's Basketball News & Content

Five Takeaways From UVA Women's Basketball's 60-55 Loss to Duke


The Plus/Minus: Virginia Women’s Basketball Wins at Clemson


Round Robin: Evaluating UVA Women's Basketball at Halfway Point of Season

Published | Modified
Val Prochaska
VAL PROCHASKA

Val graduated from the University of Virginia in the last millennium, back when writing one's senior thesis by hand was still a thing. He is a lifelong fan of the ACC, having chosen the Tobacco Road conference ahead of the Big East. Again, when that was still a thing. Val has covered Virginia men's basketball for nine years, first with HoosPlace and then with StreakingTheLawn, before joining us here at Virginia Cavaliers on SI in August of 2023, continuing to cover UVA men's basketball and also writing about women's soccer and women's basketball.

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