UVA Women's Basketball Falls to No. 22 Florida State 101-68 | Takeaways

Matt Newton | Feb 6, 2025

Virginia Athletic

Virginia women's basketball (12-12, 3-8 ACC) suffered a 101-68 loss to No. 22 Florida State (19-4, 9-2 ACC) on Thursday night at John Paul Jones Arena. To be honest, it was difficult coming up with five takeaways for this one, but we gave it our best shot. Here they are.

Virginia suffers its worst loss of the season

This may be a case of recency bias, but I see this as UVA's worst loss of the season. The defeat to Washington State in Puerto Rico remains the team's worst loss from a resume standpoint, as it is Virginia's only Quad 4 loss. And the losses to Oklahoma and Notre Dame were by wider margins, but those were road games against teams that are still ranked in the top 15 of the AP Poll. This matchup, a home game against a team ranked between 20th and 25th, was one that is usually winnable, or at the very least competitive, in Coach Mox's tenure. Instead, as we'll get into in later takeaways, the Cavaliers came out slow and things never got better, as they were outclassed by the Seminoles on both ends of the floor from start to finish. This was by far the largest home loss for Virginia under Coach Mox and it was the first time the Cavaliers gave up 100 points in a game since a 103-66 loss at Notre Dame on March 3rd, 2019, Tina Thompson's first season at Virginia.

Another slow start, but no bounce back this time

The Cavaliers have been no strangers to slow starts this season. For whatever reason, Virginia often doesn't have its ducks in a row at the opening tipoff and Coach Mox winds up calling a timeout within the first few minutes of the game. In almost every one of those games with a slow start, the Hoos have pulled themselves together, settled in, and climbed back into the game to make things competitive by the fourth quarter and give themselves a chance to win. In this game, Florida State blitzed Virginia 11-0 out of the gate, UVA didn't score until more than four minutes elapsed and made only three shots in the opening period, and the Seminoles led the Cavaliers 26-9 after the first quarter. But this time, there was no "settling in" for the Hoos. The second quarter was more competitive, with FSU winning the period 23-22, but the third quarter was even worse than the first, with Florida State blowing the game wide open and completely eliminating any chance of a comeback.

Virginia goes ice cold, then gets out of sorts

As Coach Mox mentioned in the postgame press conference, the Cavaliers got some good looks early in the game, but the shots just didn't fall. Virginia then spiraled and stopped getting those open shots altogether and the turnovers started to pile up as well. Overall, UVA shot 4/19 from beyond the arc and 28/77 (36.4%) for the game. As for the most open shot possible in the sport of basketball - the free throw - Virginia was an abysmal 8/18. Even with Kymora Johnson, Breona Hurd, and Paris Clark combining to score 46 points, UVA's offense almost never generated easy buckets.

The Cavalier defense takes a big step back

On the other end of the floor, the Cavaliers were decimated by the nation's leading scorer Ta'Niya Latson, who showed off her playmaking abilities with 27 points and 12 assists. The Seminoles got whatever shot they wanted, knocking down 10 threes and scoring 56 points in the paint. UVA's turnovers made the job even easier for FSU, who scored 25 points off of 18 Virginia turnovers. Most concerning was the Cavaliers' perceived lack of effort on the defensive end, as Florida State happened upon way too many high-percentage looks. That was particularly disappointing considering that Virginia had made some tangible progress on the defensive end in recent weeks. On this night, the Seminoles essentially danced their way to the century mark.

NCAA Tournament hopes are almost gone

It's too early to rule it out entirely; Virginia could run the table down the stretch or go on a huge run in the ACC Tournament. But given the Cavaliers' inability to close out close games this season, I simply don't see them stringing enough wins together against quality teams in order to improve their NET ranking and NCAA Tournament resume enough to earn reasonable consideration from the committee for an at-large bid. Soon enough, UVA's only hope to go to the Big Dance for the first time since 2018 will be to go on a 2024 NC State-esque run and win the ACC Tournament.

Up next, Virginia remains at home to take on Virginia Tech in the Commonwealth Clash on Sunday at John Paul Jones Arena. Tipoff is set for 12pm ET on the ACC Network.

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