The Plus/Minus: Virginia Women’s Basketball Suffocates Northwestern State

Plus

A win is a win is a win, even as we’re entering the FloSports segment of the schedule. How many people know that Northwestern State is in Louisiana? And does anyone know where Destin, Florida, home to this year’s Emerald State Classic is? I was a negative to both these questions before the game. (Oh, and Destin, FL, is outside of a town called Niceville. But that didn’t help, did it?)

Plus

Gabby White, in extended minutes, scored a career- and game-high 13 points on hyper-efficient 6/9 shooting. She grabbed a team-high six boards and had a pair of blocks and a couple steals. She is just a freshman, so the growing pains were in evidence, too, as she had four turnovers and four fouls, including a pair of egregious charges. It was still a solid performance as she ran the team as coach Agugua-Hamilton rested Kymora Johnson for the entire fourth quarter.

Plus

Jillian Brown, who has started every game of this season, had her best game so far. She was a perfect 2/2 from three, scored 10 points and added four rebounds and three assists. Coming back after a lost year, she was solid and steady all game, qualities this team desperately needs.

Minus

Breonna Hurd was absent today, not even on the bench, so I presume she didn’t travel.

Minus

Kymora Johnson is not looking like herself the past four games. On the night, she was 4/16 from the floor and 2/10 from beyond the arc and she failed to get to the free throw line. Over the past four games, she’s 17/56 from the floor (30.3%) and 9/34 (26.5%) from three-point range. This is worrisome. I wrote off the UMBC loss to one bad night for Mo, but this is becoming a trend.

Minus

The team shot 26.9% from deep. Three of them were airballs. And it would look even worse without Brown’s stellar performance. Three-point shooting seems to suffer at these kinds of early season tournaments, set as they usually are, on reconstituted courts in convention center ballrooms. This tournament is being held in an actual gym so that caveat does not apply. For the season, the Cavaliers are converting from deep at a .284 clip. Which puts them squarely in the bottom third of the ACC. Which is where the Hoos figure to finish if they don’t start converting at a higher rate.

Plus

Coach Mox played the second team the entirety of the fourth quarter, presumably to give the starters a rest given that the team has back-to-back on Monday. As far as the eye test goes, it looked ragged – to be expected – but looking at the fouls and turnovers, the two stats that most reflect disorganization, the fourth quarter totals were right in line with overall totals. Gabby White looked comfortable getting to the rim and Adeang Ring, playing the four, had four assists. Raine dos Santos flashed a good handle. This was valuable time for every one.

Minus

Olivia McGhee looked like she belonged in the second unit. She did have a lovely, half-court outlet pass to Johnson for an easy bucket, but she was 1/4 from deep, and is shooting 2/13 on the season. Unfortunately she’s devolving.

Plus

Danelle Arigbabu saw her first minutes this season. She’s been seen all season wearing a knee brace on the bench and I was starting to think she’d be red-shirting this year, but apparently not. She’s a large woman – think River Baldwin – but she’s pretty nimble on her feet, knee brace and all.

Minus

Virginia has five players listed at 6’ 2” or taller. Northwestern State’s tallest player was 6’ 1”. Virginia only outrebounded the Demons by a 42 – 35 margin. Northwestern State got 13 offensive boards, while the Cavaliers, who did grab 17 off the offensive glass, only converted those rebounds into nine second-chance points. All in all, an uninspiring performance on the boards for the Hoos.

Minus

While the Cavaliers did clean this up in the second half, Virginia’s interior D was weak. Northwestern State was seemingly able to get the ball into the low post whenever they wanted to. Had the Demons possessed even average ACC height, this could have been a much different outcome.

Next Up: The Cavs have a quick turnaround, playing Monday, November 25th at 8:30pm. The game is on FloSports. Virginia will play Nebraska, who interestingly played these same Northwestern State Demons in the season’s opening match. Nebraska won 103 – 46. This would suggest, according to the associative property of math scores, that Nebraska is favored to win by a 101 – 69 score line.