The Plus/Minus: Virginia Wilts in 2nd Half, Falls to No. 3 NC State
Virginia opened ACC play with a 72-61 loss to No. 3 NC State on New Year's Eve at John Paul Jones Arena. Val has the Plus/Minus to break down what we saw from the Cavaliers in their ACC opener.
Minus
Virginia went toe-toe with NC State in the first half and held a 32 – 31 lead as the two teams headed off to the locker room. Mimi Collins scored the first five points of the second half and NC State went on a 12-1 run and created a gap that Virginia couldn’t overcome. For the third quarter, the Wolfpack outscored the Cavaliers 23-8. Nobody is beating NC State putting up an 8-point quarter.
Plus
Virginia started brightly getting out to a 9-5 lead. Kymora Johnson connected on her first three-point attempt and then blew to the rim off a handoff from Camryn Taylor. Both teams were pushing the pace. NC State welcomed back Saniya Rivers after three games out due to injury, and she’s probably the most improved player in the ACC this year. Johnson was looking very much the part of the star freshman who had scored a career-high her last game out.
Minus
And then the wheels fell off. Coach Agugua-Hamilton wants this team to run. This team has a tendency, though, to get tunnel vision on the break, putting the ball onto the floor and just plowing into the paint regardless of who is defending. The team has done better the past three games, but on this night, the bugaboo returned. Three times in the first 13 minutes a Virginia player was called for a charge in the lane. And these weren’t good charges. Every time there were two or three defenders; each one a turnover.
Plus
Taylor Lauterbach had easily her most impactful minutes of her UVa career. She was on the court as Virginia made a run in the second quarter and when the Cavs regained the lead. She had a pair of blocks, made a three-pointer, and more importantly, took River Baldwin out of the game when she was in. Baldwin is a great story for NC State. She’s in her fifth year and she has grown to where she is now a force. She is a load down in the block, a great free throw shooter, she doesn’t foul and her growth this year is one of the reasons the Wolfpack is undefeated on the year and sitting No. 3 in the polls. Lauterbach has the size to disrupt Baldwin and Virginia looked its best when Lauterbach was on the floor.
Plus
Olivia McGhee had a fine game scoring 11 points on 3/4 shooting including canning both of her three-pointers. She fills the lanes in transition better than anyone on the team, she runs harder in the team’s half-court sets than anyone and she’s got good size on the wing. Which brings us to…
Plus and Minus
Coach Mox has a lot of depth at the 2 and the 3. She’s got McGhee, Alexia Smith, Paris Clark, Jillian Brown and Kaydan Lawson to helm those spots. And that’s before Mir McLean returns. This team, on its best days, has a next-woman-up mentality. And that’s great, but at times it’s hard to discern player rotations. If it’s hard for me, it has to be hard on the players. Jillian Brown’s minutes are wildly sporadic and she has not been the same player coming off the bench as she was as a starter.
Related: Read Matt's game report.
Minus
The three-point shooting stat line looks moderately respectable – 9 for 30, or 30% -- but it is propped up by Cam Taylor going 2/2 from deep. That’s unsustainable on Taylor’s part, and I don’t think UVA wants Taylor shooting from there. Sam Brunelle went 0/6, and she was hunting her shot, and Johnson went 2/11. Johnson obviously has the green light from Coach Mox, and she was feeling flush after going 6/7 last game out, but she’s a gunner and when the shots aren’t falling, she’s still shooting. I think she needs an amber light from Coach Mox.
Minus
Virginia was pounded on the boards and shot just 63% from the free throw line. These are both ostensibly strengths of the team, so when the team cedes those facets of the game to the opposition, winning just becomes that much harder.
Plus
Aziaha James is leading the Wolfpack in scoring and slowing her down was obviously part of Coach Mox’s game plan. Paris Clark, Alexia Smith and Olivia McGhee all took turns guarding James and she turned in a 3/14, six-point night. The problem was that Mimi Collins, a 7 ppg scorer last year, had a career night torching the Cavaliers from the baseline and beyond the arc. Collins had a game-high 25 points and Virginia just had no answer for her.
Plus
Virginia gets another crack at NC State in just 10 days. That’s a quick turnaround and we’ll learn a lot about Virginia when the Cavs travel down to Raleigh for the rematch.
Next Up: Virginia travels to Georgia Tech on Thursday, January 4th. Game time is 7pm and the game will be on the ACC Network.
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