Breaking Down the 2023-2024 Virginia Women's Basketball Roster
Late last year, Virginia women’s basketball head coach Amaka Agugua-Hamilton (hereafter referred to by her preferred Coach Mox) dressed just seven players for two games and six players for one. She clearly never wants to do that again and she brought in a whopping six new players – three freshmen and three transfers – to ensure that she has the bodies. (Tony Bennett also brought in eight new faces, so roster churn is a theme for both teams.)
But the injury bug seems alive and well on Grounds. Mir McLean, who I consider to be the best player on the team, hurt her knee mid-season last year. She took a trip this summer to Morocco, with Coach Mox’s blessing, but rumor has that it set her rehab back a bit and she’s not expected to return until after the new year. Which is a shame, because she makes the team special. She’s a double-double machine on the wing, the team’s best rebounder, and she gets her points without plays having to be run for her. If McLean is able to return with anything like her previous form, this team can expect to be playing in the Big Dance.
The second injury is to Sam Brunelle, who has known a lifetime of injuries. This doesn’t seem to be as serious, but it is keeping her from practice – she didn’t play in the Blue-White game – but she is expected to be back around the start of the season. Brunelle is a central Virginia native who at one time in her scholastic career was rated the number one prospect in the country. She returned to the commonwealth last season for Coach Mox and played mostly as a stretch four. She shot 40% from three, easily the team’s best, and was third in assists behind the point guards.
One minute into the Blue-White scrimmage, freshman Olivia McGhee injured her knee. She was seen to be in considerable pain. She did return from the locker room on crutches and with an ice pack on her knee as she watched the conclusion of the game. McGhee was a four-star top 50 recruit who combined with Kymora Johnson (a five-star top 25 recruit) to be part of Coach Mox’s homerun first recruiting class. Both are from Virginia, and locking down your own back yard is part and parcel of every coach’s recruiting blueprint. McGhee is a big guard at 6’2” and was an impressive rebounder in high school.
Lastly, Kaydan Lawson did not play in the scrimmage. Lawson is a rugged guard who rebounds well, pushes the ball hard, and at the start of last season, was on-fire from deep. 52% three-point shooting from deep through 10 games as she was a big part of a team that burst out of the gate winning their first 13 games.
Starting Lineup
McLean will be a starter the minute she is fit and Brunelle would probably play the four when Coach Mox decides to play Camryn Taylor at the center. But in their absence, what does the starting lineup look like when the team takes the floor on Wednesday, November 8th for the season opener versus Maryland Eastern Shore?
The starting point guard for the last two years was Taylor Valladay but she has taken her game to Penn State for her fifth year. The returning point guard is Yonta Vaughn, a four-star from the DC region. Vaughn is fine player with very good vision. Although she looked comfortable from the get-go, she really grew into her role and she played heavy minutes down the stretch, averaging 30 minutes/game the last five games of the season.
Vaughn is going to be a solid backup, though, to Kymora Johnson who had perhaps the most impressive showing in the Blue-White scrimmage and looked more than capable of leading an ACC team in her freshman season. Johnson was a McDonald’s All American and won the three-point competition at the McDonald’s All Star game. This team desperately needs three-point shooting, and well, that’s not Vaughn’s game. Johnson also looked impressive in transition and Mox wants this team running all time. Listening to the highlights of the Blue-White scrimmage the only exhortations I could hear from the coaches were to push the ball. Always. This is a team that is going to run.
At the 2-guard slot I would expect that Alexia Smith is going to be the first option. She’s in her second year at Virginia having transferred from Minnesota and she recorded career highs in scoring, rebounds, blocks, assists and steals. She’s not a great three-point shooter, but she seemed (very subjectively to me) to hit them at timely moments.
There’s going to be a lot of competition for this spot because in addition to Smith, Lawson plays here as well as second-year Cady Pauley. Pauley is the most intriguing player on the roster. She scored 3000+ points in high school, has point-guard vision, excellent basketball IQ, a sweet stroke and a gunner’s mindset. (Pauley played 250 minutes but took an astounding 80 three-pointers.) She’s just not an ACC-caliber athlete and that’s going to hold her back. The most interesting thing for me to chart this year is how deep Coach Mox runs her bench. Last year every player on the team had a 10-point game which means Mox will stick with the hot player. If Pauley can make the sophomore leap and carve out a meaningful 10 – 12 minutes a game, with the attendant 3-point shot, this team could be dangerous.
Two other options at the 2 will be transfers Paris Clark and Jillian Brown. Clark comes via Arizona where she was a 5-star recruit, a top 25 player, and a McDonald’s All American. Brown comes by way of Northwestern where she was a top 50 recruit and had the strongest seasons of any of the transfers. Looking at her play in the Blue White scrimmage (she’s #4) she reminded me a lot of Virginia Tech’s Kayana Traylor (and that’s a complement.)
As I’ve said, McLean will be the 3 if she’s able to come back and her backup, I suppose would have been Olivia McGhee, but we have to wait to see how she’s recovering. If Mox wanted to go big, Brunelle could play the 3, but… yeah, she’s injured too. Lawson has the size and ruggedness to fill the role, but she’s nursing something. This, clearly, is the most unsettled position.
The Cavaliers clearly lacked size last year. Brunelle, Taylor and London Clarkson all top out at 6’2” and in a league with 6’5” Liz Kitley (Virginia Tech), 6’6” Kennedy Brown (Duke), and 6’6” Kyla Oldacre (Miami), they were at a severe disadvantage under the boards. Despite that, Virginia’s strength last year was rebounding the ball, as led by McLean, and they were the third best team overall. Coach Mox went shopping and went and got more height in the way of Kansas transfer Taylor Lauterbach (6’7”) and Swedish freshman Edessa Noyan (6’3”).
Lauterbach seems promising, and the reviews coming out of training camp are that she’s a good three-point shooter to boot. But her minutes declined every year at K State and she only shot 2/11 from deep over her entire career. Now, Lauterbach has said that she was not developed at Kansas State which is why she looked elsewhere. She’s seemingly bright in that she finished her degree at Manhattan in just three years. We’ll see just how good Mox can be at training someone up in just one year.
The more intriguing center is Noyan, who has played professionally in Sweden and has been on the U-20 Swedish national team. For the U-20s she’s been listed as a center but her team’s website lists her as a forward. Highlight vids (which need to be taken with more than a single grain of salt) show her as having a pretty decent handle. She might be the first player to nudge Camryn Taylor to the four.
London Clarkson, a two-year transfer from Florida State, has been the first big off the bench for the past two years and I would expect that to continue. She’s the most efficient big on the floor. She had probably the most remarkable single-game performance of the season when she, a career 63% free throw shooter, went 14/14 from the line against Boston College. It sparked a late-season renaissance from the line as she also logged 6/8 and 7/8 performances against Wake Forest and UNC respectively. This is a poor free throw shooting team in general, but if Clarkson can keep it up, she’ll be a source of some easy points that have been eluding the Cavaliers for as long as I’ve been watching them.
That leaves Camryn Taylor, the most important player on the team the last two years (with apologies to the aforementioned Valladay.) Taylor can absolutely bang with the bigs in the ACC (as can Clarkson) and she’s led the team in scoring the last two years. She scores her points in bunches and can put up 8-10 points in a couple of minutes. She was second team All ACC last year and the only thing holding her back from being one of the most dominant players in the ACC is herself. She has serious foul trouble woes. She fouled out of six games last year and was in foul trouble eleven other games. Like her scoring, she picks up fouls in bunches. And they’re not typically fouls from banging against River Baldwin or Kyla Oldacre, who are, trust me, very large. No, her fouls are ticky tacky reach fouls or charges when she’s out of control. Of the last 12 games where she was in foul trouble? The team lost 11 of them. Taylor’s got to keep herself in games.
Strengths
So, in summary, the team is aggressive on the break and in transition, and pretty good at it. Last year the team had Valladay who was a fast break all to herself, but I think a full year of Johnson and Smith will be even better. The team is a good rebounding team even without McLean. With Mir, well, the team’s even better. There is a lot of flexibility and a lot of depth on the team and Coach Mox is good at using a deep bench. There is finally more size on the team, and you know what they say, you can’t coach height. Looking at social media, it looks like the team is having a lot of fun.
Weaknesses
The team is poor from the foul line. The team’s two best players – McLean and Taylor – both struggle with foul issues. The team is poor from deep. Brunelle shot at a 40% clip and no one else was above 30% for the season. Pauley’s sweet stroke and Lawson’s blistering start notwithstanding. Last year the team won it’s first 13 games, but injuries are going to rob the likelihood of another fast start.
Overall, there’s a lot of promise to this team, but there’s equally a lot of “if” to the team. Which is exactly what I have said about the men’s team. It should make for an interesting year. But that’s the reason why we watch, isn’t it? Because we don’t know the outcome. But the ACC is down this year. Notre Dame’s Olivia Miles, the most compelling player in the country outside of Caitlin Clark and Paige Bueckers, is injured. Louisville lost Hailey van Lith to LSU. And NC State is going to be middle of the pack. The Hoos won just four ACC games last year. They could easily double or even triple that total this year. It should make for a very intriguing season!
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