For a change, Virginia's women open with optimism

For the past 49 seasons, the Virginia women's basketball team has had just four head coaches. And only one of them managed to produce a winning record in her first season: Joanne Boyle, who went 25-11 after succeeding Hall of Famer Debbie Ryan in 2011-12.

Ryan won just eight games in 25 tries as she essentially built the program from scratch in 1977-78. By the end of her 34-year tenure, the Cavaliers had reached three straight Final Fours (1990-92) and produced five All-Americans, including two-time national player of the year Dawn Staley.

Aside from Boyle's debut season, Ryan's successors struggled to match her high standards -- at least until last winter, when the Cavaliers made a surprise run to their first NCAA tournament Sweet 16 appearance since 2000. Then came the unexpected departure of coach Amaka Agugua-Hamilton, and the arrival of Aaron Roussell.

Accompished coach taking over

Coming off an accomplished seven-year stint as head coach at the University of Richmond that included five NCAA tournament appearances, Roussell opened summer workouts with his new team this week. He inherited a better starting point than any of his predecessors -- including Ryan, who took over a program that had been in existence for only four seasons.

Most notable is the return of senior all-Atlantic Coast Conference guard Kymora Johnson, who spent roughly 10 days in the NCAA transfer portal after the school parted ways with Agugua-Hamilton. The Charlottesville native was the catalyst behind Virginia's Sweet 16 appearance last season, averaging 19.5 points (second-best in the ACC) and 5.9 assists per game.

She's been rated the No. 15 returning player in women's college basketball by ESPN and would have been one of the top transfer targets had she chosen to leave. He decision to stay bestowed instant credibility on Rousell and likely influenced the choices of teammates Tabitha Amanze, Breona Hurd, Olivia McGhee and Adeang Ring to return as well.

Roussell also hit the portal to bring in experienced transfers Eris Lester (Alabama), Janae Walker (Rutgers), Mary-Anne Asari (VCU) and Catarina Piatti (Florida), as well as adding four freshmen. He knew Asari well after competing against her and the crosstown Rams for three seasons in the Atlantic 10 Conference.

Of course, in this new era of college sports, it's imperative to have financial backing in building a roster. And Roussell has just that after Virginia alumnus Alexis Ohanian, the former executive director of Reddit and husband of tennis legend Serena Williams, pledged a reported $3 million to the Cavaliers' women's program.

All of which means more preseason optimism for the women's program than there has been since Ryan's glory years of the early 1990s. CBS Sports awarded the Cavaliers the final spot in its Way Too Early Preseason Top 25.

The ACC remains a gauntlet, with five programs (Duke, Louisville, North Carolina, Notre Dame and N.C. State) listed ahead of the Cavaliers in the CBS Sports prediction. But for the first time in quite a while, the Cavaliers are being mentioned in the same breath as their top rivals.

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