Cavaliers Now

The Plus/Minus: Virginia Women’s Basketball Fends off Clemson

Tabitha Amanze’s double-double and the 3-point shooting from Virginia’s bigs gave Virginia a hard-fought 73 – 63 win.
Val Prochaska|
Tabith Amanze
Tabith Amanze | Virginia Athletics

Plus

A win is a win is a win against a solid Clemson squad that will most likely end up jostling with Virginia as teams looking for a bye in the ACC tournament.  Virginia took a strong first quarter (22 – 10) and eventually opened a 15-point second quarter lead.  Twice Clemson got the score down to four before the Cavaliers prevailed with a 25 – 19 fourth quarter for the win.

Plus

Tabitha Amanze had her best game as a Cavalier, scoring 18 points on 6/7 shooting to go with a 6/6 performance at the free-throw line. She had 11 rebounds and grabbed half the team’s eight offensive rebounds.  Her scoring has been erratic, but her conversion rate in the paint is not as she is just a shade under 60% from the floor.  She’s been so clean from a defensive perspective the past seven games that it was a bit of a shock to see her pick up three fouls.

Plus

The bigs really lit it up from deep on the night as Sa’Myah Smith was 3/5, Romi Levy was 2/4 and Audeang Ring was 2/5.  For comparison, Paris Clark was 0-fer-2 and Kymora Johnson 0/4.  Ring’s role has settled as she’s no longer playing under the basket.  She’s playing the wing, hunting her threes.  This could be coach Agugua-Hamilton’s response to losing Olivia McGhee for the season.

Minus

Speaking of which, Breonna Hurd was not moving well today.  She had five pretty anonymous minutes in the first quarter and then spent the rest of the game at the far end of the bench. She’s not fully recovered yet.

Plus

A middling free-throw shooting team, Virginia had quite the night at the pinstripe going 20/21.  Johnson was 8/8 and Amanze was 6/6.

Plus

Virginia is just huge.  To give just one snap shot in time (and this is typical of the four I took this game) with 40 seconds remaining in the first quarter, Virginia had 6’ 5” Audeang Ring, 6’ 4” Caitlyn Weimar, and 6’ 2” Breonna Hurd matching up against 6’ 0”, 6’ 1” and 6’ 2”, and this is not even as big as Virginia can be.  The Hoos had 6’ 2” Smith, 6’ 5” Amanze and 6’ 3” Levy on the bench.  Clemson had one 6’ 2” player on the bench.  And Amanze and Ring are quite long.  The women recorded eight blocks on the night, right at about their average, which has them leading the ACC and second in all of Division I.  In addition to the blocks, Virginia seriously altered another 15 shots.

Minus

I have had this game circled on my calendar for two months.  One of my favorite ACC ballplayers is Rusne Augustinaite.  Two years ago she was ACC Freshman of the Year at Georgia Tech.  She’s hard-nosed, plays bigger than her 6-foot stature and has a feathery touch from deep.  Somehow, inexplicably, she landed in then-coach Nell Fortner’s doghouse and ended up the season on the deep end of the bench.  At the ACC tournament last year, I asked the Georgia Tech beat writer and the three self-proclaimed basketball nerds in their pep band what was the story, and nobody had one.  She wasn’t injured, she just wasn’t playing well.  So, she got new life when she transferred to Clemson to play for Shawn Poppie.  She’s Clemson’s leading scorer and she’s leading the ACC in three-point percentage… and today she just flopped.  Poppie benched her most of the second period and most of the fourth.  She did foul Levy on a three and was immediately yanked, but I have no idea why she was pulled in the second quarter.  She wasn’t playing particularly well, but when you’re down 15 points, you need your leading scorer.

Plus

We at Cavs on SI loved us some Yonta Vaughn, but it looks like her career was derailed by severe concussions and she’s no longer playing basketball.  But for however much we liked her, Gabby White is marked improvement.  Yonta was trying to be Kymora-lite, but Gabby is her own player and has a slash-to-the-rim mentality.  She’s got the body of a fully mature woman, and you have to be aware of where she is, especially on defense:

Plus

Play of the game.  Clark has had a rough couple of games shooting the ball, but she never gives up.  I love her off-ball movement here.

Next Up:  Very quick turnaround for the women as they head off to Tallahassee to take on a much diminished Florida State team, Sunday, January 4th.  Game time is 2:00pm and the game is on the ACC Network.

Published
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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