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The Plus/Minus: Virginia Succumbs to North Carolina Late

Virginia went toe-toe with No. 20 UNC for three quarters before falling apart in the fourth quarter, 81-68

Val Prochaska

The Plus/Minus: Virginia Succumbs to North Carolina Late
The Plus/Minus: Virginia Succumbs to North Carolina Late /

Virginia women's basketball remained winless in ACC play as the Cavaliers came up short in an 81-68 loss to No. 20 North Carolina on Sunday in Chapel Hill. Val has the Plus/Minus to break down the game. 

Minus

This loss does not constitute a moral victory for Virginia – the Tar Heels decisively closed out the Hoos in the final frame – but were this game not the seventh in a 1-6 stretch, there would a lot of lessons that could be the foundation for future success. Alas, the women are winless in ACC play and over the next five games they will face Florida State, Virginia Tech, this UNC team again and Notre Dame. (Virginia’s five-team pod includes both UNC and Duke, NC State and Virginia Tech. Just brutal.) Lessons are harder to absorb when you’re being pummeled.

Plus

It’s been a bad January for both of Virginia’s hoops programs: the men are 1-3 while the women are 0-5. The men don’t seem to be playing with the urgency I would expect for a team sliding out of the NCAA tournament. These women, on the other hand, are playing with far more fire and passion. Despite putting on a show on the break, (and of course getting the per-usual homefield referee advantage,) the women actually outscored UNC in the second and third quarters. Going into the fourth, UNC held a slim 53-52 advantage. These women, as I have written many a time over the past three years, do not give up.

Related:  Matt's got the recap.

Plus

Virginia has struggled to shoot the three all season, but on this day, the Cavs had a pretty fine outing, connecting on 8 of 19 treys. Camryn Taylor is officially a threat now from deep, going 2/3 and she’s now 7/9 over the last five games. Olivia McGhee was 2/4, Kymora Johnson 2/5, and Sam Brunelle was 1/3. McGhee and Taylor both had corner threes and McGhee and Brunelle’s threes came in transition. Corner threes and rhythm threes (along with kick-outs) are the best prescription for poor three-point shooting. Today they worked.

Minus

This is the big one, the major reason why Virginia is struggling, and is 0-5 in the ACC and quite likely to be 1-9 by the end of January.

Coach Agugua-Hamilton wants this team to run, to push the pace and punish the opposition in transition. Except that this team is really pretty poor in transition. Coach Mox has put the cart before the horse, the program before the players. UNC, on the other hand, put on a clinic on how to run in transition, and the fortunes of both teams could be more crystal clear after today.

I’m going to have to use a lot of UNC clips here, so bear with me, because the Tar Hells know how to run.

In the game highlights below, the best fast break of the game occurs at the 0:33 second mark.

Alyssa Ustby has blocked Sam Brunelle at the rim. The ball comes out to Reniya Kelly at the logo. Ustby is even with Paris Clark, Brunelle and London Clarkson. She’s going to break at pace, blow by all of them, and head to the rim. Kelly, for her part, has Olivia McGhee and Johnson in front of her and it’s a one on two. Now, a Virginia guard would be very likely to try to force the issue and bang to the rim. With pretty poor results. Not Kelly. She slows down a beat and forces McGhee to step up out of the paint, thereby leaving a wide open lane for Ustby.

And here’s Ustby’s SportsCenter fast break:

Virginia doesn’t have anyone who can do that right now, but Olivia McGhee is getting there (more on her in a second.)

Here’s Deja Kelly filling the wing on the right. (Reniya Kelly is down on the left, ahem, in the corner.) Wide open rhythm three. In transition. Sam Brunelle used to be able to make that kind of run before injuries robbed her of any foot speed, but in her absence, someone has to fill the lanes. It’s not happening now.

And when you fill the lanes, two central defenders have to pinch out, leaving a lane for Deja Kelly to do this:

Ugh.  I have to take a shower.  Showing that many UNC highlights?  [Shivers.]

Kymora Johnson is making progress. She’s looking to facilitate on the break and not as likely to try to convert a 1 v 3 opportunity. Forcing it at the rim was never a tendency for either Alexia Smith or Yonta Vaughn. But the rest of the wings? The team’s just too profligate, just too wasteful trying to meet the Mox dictum.

Plus

Now, the player who is stepping up is Olivia McGhee. She can run the floor like we saw Ustby do in those two clips. And on this team, she is the only one who can. 

She’s shooting just over 30% from deep which is better than everyone not named Sam Brunelle or Paris Clark. But her minutes have been wildly sporadic. The team has now played 16 games. In ten of those games, McGhee has gotten at least 15 minutes, and she’s responded well, reaching double figures in scoring eight times (and hitting nine points twice.) The other six games? She’s played less than eight minutes. She’s a freshman, she’s going to make freshman mistakes on defense. She simply has to play more, and those minutes are going to come from Paris Clark and Jillian Brown (whenever she comes back.) At this point, I think McGhee has a higher ceiling than Kymora Johnson.

Next Up: Virginia returns to the friendly confines of JPJ, hosting Notre Dame on Thursday, January 18th. Gametime is 7:00pm and the game is on the ACC Network.

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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.