Virginia Falls 65-48 Against Southern California

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. – The Virginia women’s basketball team (0-2) suffered a 65-48 loss against Southern California (2-0) on Sunday (Nov. 14) at John Paul Jones Arena.

The Trojans opened the game on an 11-0 run, but the Cavaliers came back to briefly take an 18-17 lead in the second quarter. The Trojans held a 34-30 advantage at halftime and outscored the Cavaliers 31-18 in the second half.

Junior point guard Taylor Valladay led the Cavaliers with nine points. Sophomore guard Kaydan Lawson scored five points with a team-high nine rebounds. Rayah Marshall came off the bench to score 16 points with nine rebounds for the Trojans.

HOW IT HAPPENED

USC converted its first four field goal attempts of the game, jumping out to an 11-0 lead, but the Cavaliers put together a 6-0 run of their own to begin to chip away at the deficit. An and-one from Lawson with 6.9 seconds left in the first quarter got the Cavaliers to within one, 17-16. A layup from grad student forward Tihana Stojsavljevic 1:06 into the second quarter gave UVA its only lead of the game, 18-17. USC answered with a 7-0 run, with a three-pointer from the corner from grad student guard Amandine Toi ending the run. Another three pointer, this one from junior guard Carole Miller, made it a two-point game, 29-27, with just over three minutes left in the half. The Cavaliers went into the locker room trailing by four at the break.

A jumper from junior forward Camryn Taylor made it a one-point game, 36-35, with 7:47 remaining in the third, but the Trojans went on an 8-0 run to build up a 44-35 advantage. USC took advantage of a four-minute UVA scoring drought to build up a double-digit lead, a drought ended by a layup by Meg Jefferson with 1:26 left in the period.

Valladay scored UVA’s first six points of the fourth quarter, trading points with the Trojans, to keep it a nine-point game with 5:05 remaining, but the Cavaliers would go 0-of-7 from the field in the final five minutes as the Trojans built up to the 65-48 final tally.

FROM HEAD COACH TINA THOMPSON

“We’re not feeling good right now. Today as a whole, it was not a correct representation of who we are. We’ve got to get better. Our effort has to be continuous from the start to the finish of the game. We cannot be motivated by instant successes. Basketball is a game of runs and there are going to be ups and downs. And when the momentum is not in our favor, we have to kind of buckle down and defend and be tougher and raise our level of intensity so that we can get the momentum in our favor.”

NOTES

• Virginia shot 28.6 percent (18-of-63) while USC was 23-of-65 (35.4 percent)
• USC outrebounded UVA 52-45
• USC scored 17 points off UVA’s 15 turnovers
• Eleah Parker was in the starting lineup for the first time in her Cavalier career
• Taylor Valladay scored six of her team-leading nine points in the fourth quarter. She was 5-of-6 from the free-throw line for the game
• This was Kaydan Lawson’s first game of the season after not playing at JMU. This was her first time leading the team in rebounding in a game

ON THE HORIZON

• UVA closes out the homestand with a midweek game against UCF on Wednesday, Nov. 17 at 7 p.m.