Cavaliers Now

The Plus/Minus: Virginia Women's Basketball Gets Run Over by Oklahoma

The Cavaliers get a lesson in how to run the fast break at Oklahoma, falling 95-51.

Val Prochaska

Oklahoma Athletic

Last year the Cavaliers hosted the Sooners in Charlottesville for the first ever meeting between the two programs.  Virginia lost, but the game was competitive with Virginia trailing by five with under five minutes.  This game was over by halftime as the combination of the Sooner fast break and Raegan Beers in the paint overwhelmed the Hoos.

Minus

Virginia head coach Amaka Agugua-Hamilton wants her team to run, but on this night, the Cavaliers ran into a buzz saw of a team that can actually run.  Oklahoma outscored Virginia 32-8 on the break.  Virginia did struggle at the rim, but had they had even an average night finishing, Oklahoma still would have outclassed Virginia. 

Minus

This has been a concern I’ve had for two years now under the Coach Mox regime, but the Cavaliers do not run the fast break at all well.  Spacing is non-existent.  If players will run to the three-point line, that will open up the lane as well as create options on the break.  Too many times, whoever has the ball is forced into 1 v 2 and 1 v 3s at the rim. 

The other problem with the Virginia fast break is that it is slow.  The women rarely break per se, but rather play out of transition.  When Virginia gets a rebound, the women rarely pass the ball past the half-court line.  They always dribble it.  Which means that there are always one, two, three defenders between the ball and the rim.  There’s never a Cavalier breaking hard once the shot goes up.  Olivia McGhee runs the court as well as any Cavalier, but she’s also the only player who actively runs to the three-point line.

Virginia never gets points like this, and yet Oklahoma had at least four fast breaks like this on the night:

Positive

Virginia got a front row seat in what a real fast break looks like.  Maybe the video footage will prove educational.  Because as it stands right now, the women are not playing a modern attacking game; they’re playing a poor run-n-gun game. 

Minus

When the Sooners did have to play out of the half court, Oregon State transfer Raegan Beers was too much of a force down low, scoring 26 points and grabbing 14 boards in just 22 minutes.  Beers is a load down low – she’s as big as NC State’s River Baldwin but with much better touch – and while Virginia has more size this year, Edessa Noyan and Latasha Lattimore aren’t the battlers down low that Cam Taylor and London Clarkson were.  But Beers wasn’t the only one who had her way down low.  The Sooners outscored the Cavaliers 66-14 in the paint.  Now, many of those points were a result of their success on the break, but everyone struggled to defend in the paint.

Plus

Up comfortably 44-27 at halftime, Oklahoma proceeded to hang a 35-point third quarter on Virginia.  Their fourth quarter encore was to hold Virginia to an eight-point fourth quarter.  Every sector of the game was poor for Virginia, and if there is anything more damning to add to a 95-51 rout, it’s that Oklahoma only shot 19% (6/32) from beyond the arc.  It could have been so much worse…

So, why was this a positive?  Because these are the games that Virginia needs to play.  This Oklahoma team is easily the best team the Hoos will play during the non-conference portion of the season.  The ACC is going to be brutal this year and Virginia has to be ready.  There is nothing that is going to be learned from beating up on the Americans and Bethune-Cookmans of the world.  In the ACC v SEC Challenge, Virginia gets picked-to-finish-12th Auburn (at home) and the Puerto Rico Shootout features a pretty mediocre slate of teams.  This team needed a wake-up call and Oklahoma delivered.

Plus

Freshman Breona Hurd can play the game.  She led the team with 15 points, had the best night from deep (2/4) of anyone on the team, grabbed a team-high five boards, dished out three assists and swiped three steals.  She’s rugged in the paint and moves well off-ball.  By the time ACC play begins, I predict that Hurd will be second banana to Kymora Johnson, leapfrogging Paris Clark, McGhee and Lattimore.

Up Next:  Virginia returns home to JPJ to host Radford on Wednesday, November 13th.  Game time is 7:00pm and the game is on ACC Network Extra.

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Published
Val Prochaska
VAL PROCHASKA

Val graduated from the University of Virginia in the last millennium, back when writing one's senior thesis by hand was still a thing. He is a lifelong fan of the ACC, having chosen the Tobacco Road conference ahead of the Big East. Again, when that was still a thing. Val has covered Virginia men's basketball for seven years, first with HoosPlace and then with StreakingTheLawn, before joining us here at Virginia Cavaliers on SI in August of 2023, continuing to cover UVA men's basketball and also writing about women's soccer and women's basketball.