Hot-Shooting Sooners Hand Virginia First Loss of the Season

Virginia women's basketball (3-1) suffered its first loss of the season, and first non-conference defeat in the Coach Mox era, falling to No. 25 Oklahoma (5-0) 82-67 on Sunday afternoon at John Paul Jones Arena.

The visiting Sooners shot the lights out from beyond the arc, knocking down 13 threes, while the Cavaliers were ice-cold, making just one of 23 three-point attempts. Oklahoma led by as many as 20 points before Virginia clawed back into the game and cut the deficit to as little as five in the fourth quarter, but the Sooners ultimately pulled away and handed Coach Mox's Hoos their first loss of the season.

"We're better than what we showed tonight," Coach Mox said after the game. But at the same time, that's a top 25 team - we're not there yet. We will be because we got what it takes, but we're not there yet."

The visiting Sooners gave the Cavaliers a taste of their own fast-paced medicine early on, knocking down three three-pointers in transition to take an early 13-7 lead, while Virginia started off shooting 3/11 from the floor with three turnovers. That sluggish start prompted an early timeout from Coach Mox, but Oklahoma picked up where it left off and put together an 11-0 run before Sam Brunelle finally ended the run with a nice step-through layup.

UVA started to pick up the tempo as Olivia McGhee scored fastbreak layups on back-to-back possessions to pull back within single digits. Virginia drew as close as three thanks to seven first-quarter points from Camryn Taylor, but Oklahoma led 24-18 at the end of a first quarter that saw the Sooners shoot 50% from the floor behind eight points from Aubrey Joens and a pair of threes from Lexy Keys.

The second quarter continued those trends as Oklahoma knocked down a pair of threes. Virginia answered with its first and only three of the first game from Kaydan Lawson, who played her first game of the season after returning from a knee injury. Sunday's game also saw the Cavalier debut of Arizona transfer Paris Clark, who missed the first three games with an ankle sprain.

Coming into the game, Oklahoma had made 28 of its 89 three-point attempts on the season for a modest 31.5% team shooting percentage. In the first half, the Sooners made seven of their 16 threes (43.8%), headlined by Payton Verhulst making all three of her three-point attempts. Oklahoma went on a 15-3 run in the second quarter, including 10-straight points, and led 44-27 at halftime. Virginia was an abysmal 1/16 from three in the first half and 11/40 (27.5%) from the floor.

Oklahoma built its largest lead of the game at 47-27 with a three-pointer to start the third quarter, but Virginia began to grind back into the game after that by improving its transition defense.

"One of the biggest keys to the game for us was transition defense and in the first half, that got away from us - they scored 23 points in transition in the first half and five threes out of that," Coach Mox said. "So we made some adjustments and we were able to lock in on that and in the third quarter, they didn't score in transition at all."

The Cavaliers held the Sooners scoreless for the final four minutes and 54 seconds of the third quarter and a combined 20 points from Camryn Taylor, London Clarkson, and Olivia McGhee allowed Virginia to outscore Oklahoma 21-13 in the third.

A floater from Kymora Johnson, a putback from Taylor, and a big and-one from Clarkson brought the Cavaliers back within five at 60-55 with less than eight minutes to go. It also brought the UVA crowd of nearly 4,200 fans to life as they hoped to see the Hoos complete the epic comeback.

Instead, the Sooners effectively adjusted to Virginia's improved perimeter defense and began attacking the paint. UVA found some success scoring in transition, but couldn't get any closer as Oklahoma answered every basket. Ultimately, it was Virginia's failure to get anything going from beyond the arc that doomed the Cavaliers, who went 0/7 from three in the second half. With two minutes to go, a corner three from Sahara Williams, who had 11 points in the fourth quarter alone, proved to be the dagger for the Sooners as they went on to win 82-67.

"It never feels good to lose, obviously. Credit to Oklahoma, they played a great game," said Coach Mox after the game. "For us, obviously we struggled to shoot it from the three, which is just - it's uncharacteristic. I know we haven't really shot it that well this year, but we shoot it well in practice and we're just waiting for that to click under the lights."

The three-point shooting explains a good bit of the outcome of the game, but not everything. Virginia posted 14 steals as a team and that usually leads directly to several transition opportunities for the Cavaliers, but they scored only seven fastbreak points in the game, a product of poor shot selection. Additionally, Oklahoma outrebounded Virginia 49-43, which Coach Mox was quick to identify as a "non-negotiable" for her team.

"We didn't take great shots at times, so we didn't really capitalize off all those turnovers," Coach Mox said. "Forcing them into 24 turnovers is huge, but they outrebounded us and that stat is a non-negotiable for us."

Coach Mox was pleased with the fight of her team to work back into the game in the fourth quarter and there were a few standout individual performances as well. Camryn Taylor led the Cavaliers with 17 points and London Clarkson and Olivia McGhee joined her in double figures with 13 and 14 points, respectively.

"We had some bright spots there, but overall we have to be better and we will," said Coach Mox.

Up next, Virginia (3-1) heads to the Caymans for the Cayman Islands Classic. UVA will take on Tulane on Friday at 11am and then LSU on Saturday at 5pm. Both of those games will be streamed on FloHoops (subscription required).

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