Cavaliers Now

The Plus/Minus: Virginia Women’s Basketball Takes Down #8 Louisville

Keyed by their best defensive effort of the season, Virginia knocks off Louisville in Louisville 74 – 72.
Val Prochaska|
Paris Clark and Romi Levy.
Paris Clark and Romi Levy. | Jamie Rhodes-Imagn Images

Plus

A win is a win is a win. Louisville is one of the blue bloods of women’s basketball: head coach Jeff Walz is one of only three ACC coaches to amass 500 wins at only one school (the other two are Maryland’s Kay Yow and Virginia’s Debbie Ryan, so good company.)  The team has a knowledgeable fan base that travels better than any other ACC fan base.  The team sports a 69 – 2 record at the Yum! Center against unranked ACC teams.  Those two losses?  Both to the Virginia Cavaliers.  According to the game announcers, that loss to Virginia two years ago still rankles Walz.  Well, now he’s got another to stew about.

Plus

This may be the best weekend for Virginia hoops in at least a decade.  This game was just as thrilling as yesterday’s men’s game where the Hoos dropped Miami 86 – 83.  Just as Chance Mallory won the game with 3 seconds remaining, Romi Levy hit the winning three with 13 seconds left.  This game was physical – the refs were at least consistent in letting both teams play – and there was clutch shooting on both sides of the ball.  Both teams had something to play for; Louisville was trying to stay even with Duke in the race for the regular season crown while Virginia was looking for that signature win that would get them off the NCAA tournament bubble.  Well, it doesn’t get much more resume worthy than beating Louisville away.

Plus

Coach Agugua-Hamilton had the team start out in a 3 – 2 zone which I have wanted to see more of.  Last year Coach Mox installed 6’ 5” Latasha Lattimore at the top of the zone, which was disruptive to be sure, but she has a better option this year in 6’ 3” Romi Levy.  Levy is extremely mobile, has good size, and active hands and she effectively dictates what the opposing offence is going to do.  Anytime the defense can do that, it’s a win.

Plus

Virginia ran the break about as well as they possibly can, especially in the first quarter.  Down 10 - 3 early, it was the break that spurred Virginia to a 15 – 2 run that would ultimately have them up 18 – 14 at the end of the first quarter.  Levy, Kymora Johnson and Paris Clark all got well ahead of the ball for relatively easy layups.  That success forced Louisville to spread out to defend the break and would lead to (relatively) easy coast-to-coast forays by Clark and Gabby White in the third quarter as Louisville was fighting to narrow an 11-point halftime deficit to just two points.

Minus

Injuries suck.  I could probably just make an autofill “Minus” for injuries, and in this case, it was Louisville who lost star Taj Roberts just three minutes into the game.  Yeah, right about the time Virginia was going on the 15 – 2 run.  Injuries suck for everyone, and here’s hoping Roberts recovers quickly, but Virginia did what they had to do: they took advantage of the situation and ran Louisville off the court.

Minus

Louisville doesn’t have a lot of size playing with just two bigs for most of the game, 6’ 2” Laura Ziegler and 6’ 3” Elif Istanbullouglu.  Virginia has three players 6’ 4” or taller, and yet it was the Cardinals who ruled the boards.  Louisville grabbed 40 boards to Virginia’s 32 and the disparity was even more pronounced on the offensive glass as they doubled up Virginia 22 – 11.  Despite 22 offensive boards, Louisville scored just 13 second-chance points.  (Virginia scored 10.)  It was a protracted battle in the paint and no one was backing down.

Plus

Paris Clark set the tone early getting back on defense faster than anyone else and then getting ahead of the Louisville defense on the very next play.  She was most effective attacking the rim out of the half court and drawing three fouls along the way.  To be frank, Clark has been underwhelming in ACC play having hit double figures only four times in fifteen games.  On this day Clark had 14 points, six rebounds and a team-high eight assists.

Plus

Kymora Johnson had a relatively quiet game by her lofty standards.  She did lead the team in scoring with 16 points, but it took her 17 shots to do so, and she failed to get to the line even once.  And her decreasing effectiveness from deep is a topic for another day, but she’s still Kymora Johnson.

After a Tabitha Amanze bucket gave Virginia a 61 – 55 lead in the fourth quarter, a pair of Louisville threes tied the game at 61.  On that second three, Elif Istanbullouglu took the shot maybe 10 seconds into the shot clock.  She knew she had to be the one to take that shot.  It was a great sense of reading the moment on her part.

Johnson came right down and answered with this shot:

Two minutes later a Reyna Scott three gave the Cardinals a 68 – 69 lead.  Mo answered with this dagger:

The sabermetrics guys will try to tell you that all points are the same, it doesn’t matter when you score them.  All points are fungible, as it were.  And that may be true if you’re playing computer simulations, but we’re not.  These are real, flesh and blood humans playing the game, and emotion and momentum are real things, even if we haven’t learned how to quantify them yet.

These shots were huge.

Plus

Levy opened the scoring for the Hoos with a three and this shot won the game:

Levy scored 15 points – 6/9 from the floor and 3/5 from deep – and her defense at the top of the zone set the tone for Virginia’s defense which limited Louisville to 36% shooting from the floor and 30% from beyond the arc.  She’s the player of the match.

Minus

Look, Jeff Walz is a great coach: 500 wins, 20+ wins every season excepting his first year, multiple Elite Eight appearances and yet he adheres to the should-be-broken golden rule of yanking players with two first-half fouls.  Just three and a half minutes into the second quarter (and remember, he’s already lost Taj Roberts to injury,) Istanbullouglu picked up her second foul.  Down 27 – 20 and chasing the game since early going, Walz removes Istanbullouglu.  Virginia’s lead would balloon to 11 at the half and it was simply too big a margin to return from.  As you might have already guessed, Istanbullouglu didn’t pick up another foul the rest of the way.

Plus

Virginia now has two Quad 1 wins: Notre Dame, who is playing better, and now Louisville.  Virginia has been dancing around the bubble, alternating between first four out and last four in.  This win should be enough to get the Cavaliers off the bubble.

Let’s break out the Good Ol’ Song:

Next Up:  Virginia gets another shot at a Quad 1 win this Thursday, February 26th when they host North Carolina.  Game time is 7:00pm and the game is on ACC Network Extra.

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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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