Cavaliers Now

Point/Counterpoint: Reviewing the UVA Women's Basketball Season So Far

Taking stock of where things stand for the Virginia women's basketball team through the first nine games of the season

SI Editorial

Point/Counterpoint: Reviewing the UVA Women's Basketball Season So Far
Point/Counterpoint: Reviewing the UVA Women's Basketball Season So Far /

It’s exam week, and there’s no basketball. And as we just learned this week, Virginia’s student-athletes do a better job at the student part than anyone else in the country. So while the women take a well-deserved break to hit the books, Matt and Val will take a deeper look into where the team stands right now. Let’s dive in!

1. As part of our preview of the women's hoops team, Matt and I had a draft of the team. (See the results of the draft here) Let's revisit those picks. Which was your best pick? Who won the draft?

Val: Well, I think I won the draft based on our third-round selections. I chose Jillian Brown while Matt took Kaydan Lawson. I got the clear winner there as Brown has been the revelation on the season. Brown is 5’10” and plays the wing; in other words, she’s certainly not a jumbo wing, and yet she’s leading the team in rebounding and has a per 40 minute rate of 14 boards a game. She’s got good vision in the half-court and on the secondary break and is comfortably third on the team in assists. She’s come back down to earth a bit in terms of her success at the free throw line, but here’s what regression to the mean looks like for Brown: she’s still connecting on 83% of her free throws.

Actually, Brown is the single most representative player of this team. These women rebound strongly, and Brown is the best. (Well, until a similarly built Mir McLean returns. Hopefully soon.) She is one of the best free throw shooters on one of the very best free throw shooting teams in the country. (At 83%, she is only sixth best on the roster.) This team is not good from deep, 299th out of 360 teams. And Brown is struggling along with everyone else…. No, scratch that, she’s the worst, hitting just 2 of 21 from beyond the arc. And lastly, I think this team as a whole gets tunnel vision in transition. Yes, Coach Agugua-Hamilton wants the team to run, but too often in my mind we see players try to take it to the rim in 1v2 and 1v3 situations. Especially where there is help. Brown is just as likely to exhibit this tunnel vision.

So there you have it, Matt! Jillian Brown is the bellwether of this team.

Matt: Hard to argue against your claim that you won the third round. I’d say I got the steal of the draft in round six, though. Since returning from injury, Paris Clark has had a very promising start in her first six games, bursting onto the scene with a 19-point, seven-rebound effort against the reigning champs LSU in the Caymans. Clark followed that up with two more double digit scoring efforts and has replaced Jillian Brown in the starting lineup in the last four games. It’s shaping up to be an interesting battle between Clark and Brown for who will end up being the most impactful transfer. UVA will need both players to continue to deliver significant contributions in order to have success in ACC play.

2. The marquee game thus far is obviously the Hoos taking on LSU in the Cayman Islands Classic. What did we learn about the team in that game?

Val: The revelation was how good Paris Clark could be. After missing the team’s first five games and with just three practices under her belt, Clark got the starting nod and ended up Virginia’s high scorer. She didn’t start a single game at Arizona and she averaged 13 minutes and 3.5 points per game. It was a heck of a first start.

We saw that this team is never out of the game and that they will battle to the final whistle. That didn’t surprise me, though. I’ve been watching this team closely for four years, and even in the last two years of that dumpster fire that was the Tina Thompson regime, these women never give up. London Clarkson, Camryn Taylor, and the now-departed Taylor Valladay. They fought tooth and nail. Didn’t matter the score. And this current iteration is fighting just as hard.

And the last thing we learned is that winning gets a lot easier if you can make the three. Sam Brunelle was 5/11 and Yonta Vaughn was 3/4. Brunelle is a threat from deep. The team desperately needs someone else – anyone, really – to be able to hit a three.

Matt: Agreed on all counts. Though it’s starting to seem like Virginia should look into playing all of its games in the Cayman Islands. UVA’s three-point percentage in two games in the Cayman Islands Classic? 36.4%. UVA’s three-point percentage in the other seven games? 21.6%. The Cavaliers made 24 threes in those two games and just 35 triples in the other seven games this season. This is a talented team that can win a lot of games this season even without good three-point shooting, but the Hoos have placed a low ceiling on their success this year by struggling so much from beyond the arc. 

The most likely path for Virginia’s three-point game to improve is for Kymora Johnson to get herself out of this early freshman year shooting slump she finds herself in. We all know Johnson can knock down a three - she won the three-point shooting contest at the McDonald’s All-American Game - and her form is good, but for whatever reason the shots just aren’t falling. Johnson is taking the second-most three-pointers on the team (5.2 attempts per game, second only to Brunelle) but is converting on just 21.3% of those attempts. It doesn’t need to be an explosive improvement, but a gradual progression that gets Johnson up around 30% would have wonderful effects on UVA’s offense.

3. Virginia is going to start the ACC slate with a bang, playing a resurgent NC State Wolfpack twice in the first four games. The team has a pair of buy games remaining, first against Wofford this Saturday and then Fordham on the 21st. What kinks still need to be ironed out for the women?

Val: I am so looking forward to getting NC State. Like just about everyone else in the punditsphere, I thought NC State was going to have a bit of a down year. And yet, here they are, undefeated and ranked third in the country, and led by River Baldwin, who has made the unheard of “5th year leap.”

The biggest kink is three-point shooting. Many a former player has said that the hardest practices of the year come during the exam break. Games have been played, the rotation is set, there’s more at stake. There’s just a greater intensity now than in preseason practices. Coach Mox has said after several games that the team is hitting their threes in practice but that is not carrying over to the games. Maybe now in this more competitive regime, keep on working on the deep shot. The women did take five corner threes against Rider – and that would be part of my prescription – but the team needs to work harder to find Sam Brunelle trailing the fast break. And then, somehow, still prioritize free throw shooting because this is an elite skill.

This is how to run the break. That's three passes. Penetration and a kick out. A trailing shooter on the wing. Virginia has far too many players trying to take it coast-to-coast.

Matt: Obviously, the No. 1 area of concern is three-point shooting, but as we’ve both discussed that at length already, I’ll go in a different direction. If the threes aren’t falling, then the strategy needs to be for the Cavaliers to be more aggressive in getting the ball to the paint and hunting for fouls. This is a great free throw shooting team. UVA’s team free throw percentage of 81.0% ranks 7th in all of Division I women’s basketball, but the Cavaliers attempt 19.3 free throws per game, which ranks a pedestrian 88th in the country. Virginia shouldn’t abandon the three-pointer altogether, but orienting the offense to more frequently generate opportunities for great free throw shooters like Camryn Taylor, London Clarkson, and Jillian Brown (and in a smaller sample size, Paris Clark and Olivia McGhee) to get to the charity stripe should be a much more efficient strategy than continuing to hoist up threes - UVA currently attempts more than 25 three-pointers per game, ranking 33rd in the country. Val has already mentioned adjusting the three-point shot selection to take more corner threes. The Cavaliers should adapt their shot selection such that they are taking more corner threes, but less threes overall, and prioritize paint touches that could lead to foul shots.

4. And sticking with buy games in general, this is what Dawn Staley, head coach at South Carolina, had to say following her team's recent thrashing of Morgan State.

Waxing philosophical for a moment, what's your take on buy games?

Val: I just don’t think you learn anything from 108-35 victories, even if the other team is playing as hard as they can. These are varsity vs junior-varsity games in reality and I think they are embarrassing, to be frank. It might be a thrill for a MEAC team to play college royalty like South Carolina, but most of the buy games for power conference teams are so non-competitive that they are, well, embarrassing. (I can’t really think of another word to capture the emotion.) These games provide the funds for smaller schools to offer the wealth of programs they do. I appreciate the integrity of Dawn Staley, she is a Hoo after all, but it still rings hollow.

Matt: I agree with you to an extent. These games often get out of hand and the benefits for either team (the smaller program getting a chance to play against the best and the major program getting a chance to clean things up in a low-stakes environment) are limited at best. With that said, and without getting into the economics of college basketball scheduling, these games are necessary and there’s only so much that can be done to avoid drastically lopsided outcomes. Even the most aggressive non-conference schedules for a major conference program will only feature at most a handful of games against other major conference competition. While playing marquee games against good teams in non-conference play undoubtedly pays dividends for improving your team in the long run (not to mention making for entertaining early-season matchups for TV), there is a similar limit to those benefits, especially if those games turn out to be losses for your team. Metrics like strength of schedule sort through quality of opponents, but a team’s overall record still carries significant weight and so it is important to stack wins and have a good record through non-conference play. In an ideal world, the sweet spot would be to play a bunch of games against highly-competitive mid-majors - this year it would be teams like UNLV, Green Bay, Davidson, and Saint Joseph’s, all teams that are currently in the top 50 of the NET rankings. But there are only so many quality mid-major programs and it’s difficult to predict who those teams will be when the schedule is being made months in advance. Buy games are usually non-competitive, sure, but they are necessary.

5. Coach Mox has a ridiculously over-populated bench. She went 11-deep against LSU. But as ACC play hits and we hopefully get to see the return of Mir McLean, who is most in danger of losing playing time?

Val: Cady Pauley. She is a fan favorite; her first entrance into the game gets the loudest cheer in JPJ. When she lets fly from deep the collective gasp of Wahoo Nation is deeper for anyone other than Brunelle. And yet… Pauley is, well, she’s just not been very good. The numbers are ugly. After shooting just 27% from deep last year, and somehow developing a reputation as a great shooter, she’s just 4 of 26 from three-point range this year. That’s 15%. She gets good looks at the basket and she is always open. Open because no one has to guard her. At the back end of the bench, Kaydan Lawson brings much more to the table than Pauley.

Matt: If Mir McLean returns to something close to her pre-injury form, then the ripple effects will be felt throughout the roster. With the exception of Camryn Taylor and Kymora Johnson, I’d say every player on the roster could see her minutes decrease marginally if McLean returns and is playing good basketball. And it would be consistent with Coach Mox’s philosophy about the depth of her roster that the minutes redistribution would be carried out by committee rather than through one single player being relegated to the bench. With that said, I agree with you that in general, as we enter ACC play, Pauley will most likely see her minutes decrease with one of the freshmen - Olivia McGhee or Edessa Noyan - being the primary beneficiary, at least until McLean returns.

6. Where is this team going to finish in the ACC?

Val: I felt pretty confident at the beginning of the year that this was going to be a down year for the ACC. The player losses for most teams seemed greater than the additions. Notre Dame’s Olivia Miles may be lost for the entire year. No one can replace Hailey Van Lith at Louisville, and Virginia Tech caught lightning in a bottle last year.

There will be more churn, but I expect the mid-table to be the same. The question is whether the Cavaliers can play with the Clemsons, the Dukes, the Miamis. I think they can. Virginia is the best rebounding team in the ACC, as well as the best free throw shooting team. Virginia is the worst 3-point shooting team, though, if they get some positive regression to the mean, they can compete with anyone. At the beginning of the year, I thought a 9-9 record was reasonable. I still think that now. Virginia ought to get one win in the ACC tournament and an invite to the NCAA tournament in March. 

Matt: I agree. I think Virginia could very well get to .500 in conference play and finish as high as 7th in the standings depending on which teams those wins come against and how things eventually shake out. I also concur that the key will be if the Cavaliers are able to even marginally improve their three-point shooting because this is a really solid team otherwise and one that can and should qualify for the program's first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2018. 

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