Women's Basketball: State of the Program

The Cavaliers are entering Year Four of the Amaka Agugua-Hamilton era with almost as many questions to be answered as they had in the first year of her tenure. Roster churn has overtaken this team to the same degree as it has every program, both men’s and women’s, in the country. Fair warning: this piece is largely speculative, but that is why they play the games after all.

One thing is certain: coach Mox has breathed life into a program that had zombie-walked during the Tina Thompson years. Last year the Cavaliers had the fourth-highest attendance in the ACC behind only program powerhouses NC State and Louisville, and Notre Dame, a team that featured three sure-fire first rounders. Season tickets in the lower bowl sold out and I expect the same to happen again this year. Coach Mox has swagger and she presides over the best social-media presence on Grounds. She has a generational player in Kymora Johnson and even before receiving $3 million from UVa grad Alex Ohanian, she had proved to be a competent recruiter.

The results on court have been mixed. On the one hand, the ACC is one of the premier conferences in women’s hoops, and Coach Mox’s record has improved each year and last season the team earned a first-round bye in the ACC tournament. On the other hand, going from 15 to 16 and finally to 17 wins each season seems relatively stagnant.

There will be room for the women to advance up the ACC table this year because the ACC will be down this year. The ACC lost a lot of top-end talent to the transfer portal, talent that I don’t see as having been replaced. Ta’Niya Latson, the leading scorer in the country last year, left Florida State to join Dawn Staley at South Carolina. Olivia Miles, the most eye-grabbing player in the women’s game, decamped from Notre Dame to go to TCU. Oluchi Okananwa, ACC Tournament MVP and owner of the best half of basketball I have seen in the past decade, spurned Duke to go to Maryland. ACC Freshman of the Year Dani Carnegie moved from Georgia Tech to Georgia, and my favorite player of the last two ACC tournaments, also from Georgia Tech, Toni Morgan, left for Kentucky.

The Players

Everything begins and ends, as it did last season, with junior point guard Kymora Johnson. Johnson saw all her counting numbers increase last season: from 15.3 ppg to 17.9 last year, assists went from 5.4 to 5.8 per game, and rebounds increased from 4.7 to 6.0. Surely some of this was just due to playing more minutes as she went from 31minutes per game to 37.2, but actuality is a bit more nuanced. In her first year, Johnson had to share leadership with Camryn Taylor and Sam Brunelle, seniors with outsized personalities. Last year, Johnson ran the entire show, took the biggest shots, had the most pressure for producing. I expect this season to be more of the same for Johnson.

As for familiar faces, well, there aren’t many. Yonta Vaughn has disappeared from the roster, though maybe she just got realistic about the number of concussions she’d suffered. RyLee Grays is off the roster as well. Latasha Lattimore, Edessa Noyan, Payton Dunbar, and a pair of red-shirts, Hawa Doumbouya and Kamryn Kitchen, have all transferred out.

Paris Clark returns, most likely starting as Johnson’s backcourt mate. Clark is a great open court defender and she finished last season on a tear, scoring in double figures her last eight straight games. Which was seven games longer than her longest consecutive games streak. Olivia McGhee and Breonna Hurd are the returning wings. Hurd is comfortable banging in the paint while McGhee, owner of the prettiest jumper in the ACC, prefers to hunt the three-pointer. Jillian Brown returns after red-shirting last season, presumably for an ACL tear.

If this team is going to improve, say to being an actual force in the ACC, it is going to be dependent on the growth of McGhee and Hurd. McGhee’s counting numbers increased in her sophomore season, but that was largely due to her minutes increasing. If either can progress to become a true third option, then this team’s ceiling increases to top half of the standings as opposed to bottom half.

That’s it for returners.

The most notable newcomer is going to be Sa’Myah Smith who transferred over from LSU where she spent time banging down low with Angel Reese and Flau’jae Johnson. She came on strong at the end of last year, saving her best for last as it were, recording a double-double in LSU’s four NCAA tournament games.

Gabby White is the one freshman joining the team, a McDonald’s All American and a top 100 recruit. If she plays according to her reputation, she will supplant Brown as the first backcourt player off the bench.

As for the rest of the team, they are a largely unknown cast of transfers. I will say this for Coach Mox, she is spreading her net worldwide as Raiane Dias Dos Santos hails from Brazil, Tabitha Amanze is Nigerian, Adeang Ring comes from Australia, Romi Levy is Israili, and Danelle Arigbabu is German.

The Team

As noted previously, there is a lot of churn here, so looking at last year will not be overly constructive.

Having said that, I have two concerns. The first is three-point shooting. Last year’s iteration took a lot of threes -- 720, or 5th in the ACC – and yet was decidedly poor at doing so: 30.8%, or 15th in the ACC. Shooting that many threes when you are decidedly substandard at doing so is a recipe for bottom-table mediocrity.

The second concern, especially when you listen to Coach Mox talk about the team, is this team does not run well. Mox almost brags about how this team runs and pushes the pace, and I’m here to tell you that they don’t. I have watched easily 60 games over the past two years and I can count the number of outlet passes on one hand. Players out in front filling the lanes have their backs to the ball, so every break, unless Paris Clark gets a steal, is someone handing the ball to Johnson, who dribbles all the way up. She is going to take it into the paint and if she can’t get a shot, then and only then, will she give the ball up. Johnson is quick, and she can finish at the rim 1 v 2, but it is predictable and easily defended.

The other problem is that with this as the template, both Hurd and Clark have tried to emulate the full court push, only to finish at the rim 1 v 2 or 1 v 3. Which is a losing proposition to say the least. It took both half a season to learn to stop doing that. Hopefully it won’t take them that long this time around.

For the last two years of the Tina Thompson regime and the first couple of seasons under Coach Mox, the team’s identity was rebounding, especially on the offensive glass. That tailed off last year which I am sure Coach Mox noted. This team will have good height as five players are over 6’4” and we’ve got a trio listed as 6’2”.

The Season

The ACC is what it is. The women play an 18-game ACC slate: every team once but one “natural” rival twice. Virginia’s rival is Virginia Tech, and Tech, two years out from the Liz Kitley-Georgia Amoore glory years, is decidedly mid-table. Playing them twice is fine. Because Virginia has to do the West Coast swing to play Stanford and Cal, the schedule makers are a little kinder to the Hoos in terms of home scheduling against the stronger ACC entrants. UNC, NC State, Notre Dame and Miami will all come to the JPJ while Virginia has to play Duke and Louisville on the road.

The problem is the out-of-conference slate of games, which to be frank, looks like it was conceived to get a coach to 18 wins as opposed to preparing a team for the rigors of the ACC gauntlet.

There are 31 conferences in Division I women’s basketball. The 30th best, or second to worst, conference is the Big South. UVa plays three Big South teams: Winthrop, Longwood and Radford. The 28th worst conference is the MEAC and we play three of their teams, UMES, Morgan State and Howard. We play teams from the America East Conferences (26th worst,) the Horizon League (21st worse,) Patriot (20th worst) and Southland (19th worst.)

This run of games is designed for one thing only: to bully much weaker teams and, presumably, have the JPJ rocking. It won’t prepare the team for the ACC.

Going by last year’s NET ratings, there are only two games of interest in the non-conference portion of the season. In the ACC v SEC challenge, the Hoos drew Vanderbilt, possessor of the 20th best NET rating. Virginia is playing away that game, so that has the potential to be a Quad I win.

Virginia is also going to the Emerald Coast Classic the week before Thanksgiving. The first game is against Northwestern State (I am pretty sure I have never heard of them before) while the second is against either Nebraska (40th in the NET last year) or Purdue-Fort Wayne, surprisingly 82nd in the NET. This is neutral territory, a win over either could be easily be a Quad 2 win.

Twelve non-con games and the possibility of only a single Quad 1 win and a single Quad 2 victory. That is NOT how you schedule if you want to, you know, actually play in the NCAA tournament come March. This is scheduling malfeasance as far as I am concerned.

The Coach

Coach Mox is intense, talking about culture and character every time she’s asked about the program. Those are awesome attributes to champion, but I’d argue she’s still feeling her way as to how to actually build a “team culture.” She’s run off several players from three-year program stalwarts like London Clarkson and Kaydan Lawson to a pair of red-shirts who didn’t even play last year, Kamryn Kitchen and Hawa Doumbouya. Churn is everywhere; just look at the men’s roster. But even with Ohanian money, she couldn’t keep Latasha Lattimore around for a second year.

This is year four of the rebuild. Coach Mox came here at the same time as Tony Elliott, who has come up big in his “hot-seat” year. It is time for Coach Mox to make the same leap.

We’ll be covering the women every step of the way here at Cavs on SI. Come along and join us. It should be a heck of a ride.

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