Virginia Women's Basketball: Cady Pauley Transfers to Missouri State

Virginia women's basketball sophomore guard Cady Pauley is transferring to Missouri State. Pauley entered the transfer portal with two years of eligibility remaining at the end of March and officially signed with Missouri State on Wednesday (April 10).

It's a homecoming for Pauley, a native of Milan, Missouri, and also sends her to the school to which she was originally committed. Pauley, who scored more than 3,000 points in her high school career to rank No. 8 all-time in scoring in Missouri high school girls basketball history, initially committed to Amaka Agugua-Hamilton when she was head coach at Missouri State.

When Coach Mox took the job at Virginia in March of 2022, Pauley followed her and became Mox's first high school commit at UVA, signing with the Cavaliers just a few days after Sam Brunelle transferred in from Notre Dame.

Playing time was difficult to come by for Pauley in her two seasons at Virginia. She played more as a freshman when the Cavaliers dealt with significant injury troubles and knocked down 22 threes in 24 games that year, but saw her time on the floor decrease this season as Coach Mox had 13 healthy players at her disposal for most of the year. Pauley's minutes, scoring, and three-point percentage dropped across the board. With little encouragement that her playing time would increase if she stuck around, this seems like the right move for both Pauley and Virginia that she find a new home.

That new home ended up being her old home, as Pauley has signed with her original school and will now play for Beth Cunningham, who formerly served as VCU's head coach as well as an assistant at Notre Dame and Duke before becoming Coach Mox's successor at Missouri State.

"We are excited to have Cady join our Lady Bear family," Cunningham said of Cady Pauley. "Cady is a proven scorer and a pure shooter with the ability to stretch a defense.  Her love for the game, competitive nature, high IQ and ability to score and facilitate will translate in our system."

As we take a look at Virginia's roster moving into next season, the Cavaliers are losing Camryn Taylor, Sam Brunelle, and London Clarkson, who have each exhausted their eligibility. Kaydan Lawson, Alexia Smith, and Taylor Lauterbach each have a COVID fifth year, but Lawson won't be on the team next season, as both she and London Clarkson were dismissed from the program before the WBIT. Cady Pauley is the first Cavalier to transfer to another program this offseason.

Barring further departing transfers, Virginia is expected to return Kymora Johnson, Olivia McGhee, Edessa Noyan, Paris Clark, Yonta Vaughn, Jillian Brown, and Mir McLean, who missed the entire season with an injury, but who still has two years of eligibility remaining. UVA is also set to add four-star recruit Breona Hurd (Waynesville, MO) as a freshman next season. Even if both Taylor Lauterbach and Alexia Smith return for their fifth years, that still leaves Coach Mox with a few open scholarship spots to fill with transfers for next season.

As always, we'll keep an eye on all of the roster movement for the Virginia women's basketball program this offseason at CavaliersNow.