UVA Women's Basketball Uses Big 4th Quarter to Pull Away From Campbell 74-49

The Cavaliers opened the 4th quarter on a 19-0 run to turn a close game into a comfortable 25-point win

With a little less than eight minutes left in third quarter, Coach Mox's Cavaliers found themselves trailing by seven points, seemingly destined for an uphill battle in order to find a way to win their second game of the season. Instead, UVA proceeded to go on a 35-2 run over the next 15 minutes of game-time, turning what was a close game into a comfortable 25-point victory, as Virginia pulled away from Campbell for a 74-49 win on Sunday afternoon at John Paul Jones Arena. 

After missing the season opener with an injury, graduate forward London Clarkson returned to the starting lineup and made an immediate impact, scoring the first basket of the game and making a couple of defensive stops early on. 

"I was really excited to be back and I just wanted to have a strong presence going into the game because we always talk about punching first," Clarkson said after the game. 

It was the visiting Fighting Camels who threw the first punch, though, knocking down a couple of early threes and taking a 10-4 lead. Alexia Smith responded with a three-pointer that sparked a 13-0 run for the Cavaliers. That run included three-consecutive baskets for star freshman guard Kymora Johnson and Virginia held Campbell scoreless for the final five minutes and 16 seconds of the first quarter, taking a 17-10 lead at the end of the opening period. 

Foul trouble began to plague the Cavaliers in the second quarter, with the aforementioned Johnson picking up her second personal foul along with forwards Camryn Taylor and Edessa Noyan. With Taylor and Johnson spending a big chunk of the second period on the bench, Campbell started to take advantage of some poor defensive play from Virginia, making nine-consecutive shots and winning the second quarter 25-12 to take a 35-29 lead on the home team at the half. 

"I didn't like how we were playing in the first half," Coach Mox said after the game. "We were in foul trouble. We weren't really being us. Second half was more of us."

Coach Mox mentioned that Virginia's lack of sharpness and energy defensively caused the Cavaliers to be out of sync offensively, not playing their typical fast-pace style and not taking high percentage shots. Those issues were corrected in the second half and it started on the defensive end. 

Campbell built its largest lead of the game at 42-35 early in the third quarter, but the Fighting Camels would then endure a scoring drought of more than six minutes and would score just two points for the next 15 minutes of game-time as UVA ratcheted up the defensive intensity. 

"[Campbell] challenged us defensively in the first half and we had to really lock down and get back to our principles, get back to playing how we practice," Coach Mox said. "I just really like how our team responded."

With Kymora Johnson and Camryn Taylor back on the floor, Virginia began to execute at a high level on both ends of the floor. UVA used a 12-0 run, capped by a transition three-pointer from Olivia McGhee, to retake the lead 51-44 at the end of the third quarter. Johnson scored four points and dished out two assists in the period and Jillian Brown scored eight in the third. 

Virginia took its defensive play to another level in the fourth quarter, holding Campbell entirely off the scoreboard for the first seven minutes of the final period. UVA scored the first 19 points of that fourth quarter to completely seize control of the game. Johnson delivered the metaphorical dagger with back-to-back transition buckets, the first a tough layup off the glass plus a foul and the second a catch-and-shoot three off of a feed from Brown. 

While +/- is a flawed statistic that doesn't usually paint the whole picture, it can't be a coincidence that Virginia was +38 when Kymora Johnson was on the floor and +36 when Camryn Taylor was on the floor, but was outscored by Campbell by a significant margin when those two players were off the floor. 

Taylor finished with a game-high 16 points to go along with four blocks and two steals and Johnson had 15 points, seven assists, six rebounds, two blocks, and a steal. Three other Cavaliers scored in double figures, with Jillian Brown and London Clarkson scoring 12 points apiece and Alexia Smith tallying 10 points and six boards. 

Virginia improves to 2-0 on the season with the win and will be back in action on Wednesday, hosting William & Mary at 7pm at John Paul Jones Arena. 

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