Noyan Finding Comfort Zone in Second Year

By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — When they see each other on Grounds, University of Virginia student-athletes Edessa Noyan and Albin Gashi exchange greetings. In Swedish.

Both came to UVA from Sweden. Noyan, a forward on the women’s basketball team, is from Södertälje, a city about 20 miles southwest of Stockholm. Gashi, a standout on the men’s soccer team, is from Vårgårda, a small town that’s closer to Gothenburg near the country’s western coast.

Apart from her occasional interactions with Gashi, Noyan doesn’t see many reminders of Sweden when she’s in Charlottesville, and she misses her mom’s home-cooked meals.

“I don’t get a lot of that here,” Noyan said, smiling.

She went home only once during the 2023-24 school year, during the winter break, but Noyan spent much of this summer in Europe, playing for Sweden’s under-20 national team in two tournaments.

“It was fun competing and being with my old friends and talking Swedish full time,” Noyan said.

Up first was the four-team Nordic U20 Championship in her hometown of Södertälje, and the 6-foot-3 Noyan averaged 13.3 points, 5.3 rebounds and 2.0 assists per game to help Sweden win the gold medal.

Then came the 16-team European U20 Championship in Lithuania. Sweden finished 12^th in that tournament, with Noyan averaging 8.4 points, 6.0 rebounds and 0.9 assists per game.

“It was fun,” Noyan said recently at John Paul Jones Arena, where she rejoined her UVA teammates this month. “I like competing against people that are good, and you have good teams there. Spain is really good and we played against them. Spain and France ended up being in the final. So it was really good basketball to watch too.”

Noyan missed practice time at JPJ while she was in Europe, but the Cavaliers’ coaching staff supported her decision to play for Sweden, as she’s done for several years on national age-group teams.

“For players to be able to represent their country is an amazing opportunity,” UVA assistant coach CJ Jones said. “It’s the same thing where if one of our student-athletes were able to represent Team USA, it would be a no-brainer for her to go and do that and accomplish those goals.”

Jones added: “I think it’s good for them to be able to go and get away for a second and work on some of the things that you want to build on. You get a chance to do it in another setting, but at the same time be able to represent your country and win and compete.”

As a freshman in 2023-24, Noyan played in 28 games, with three starts, for a UVA team that knocked off four ACC opponents ranked in the top 20. She shot 50 percent from the floor to lead the Wahoos in that category and posted season highs of 13 points (against Boston College) and 10 rebounds (against High Point).

Her teammates in Sweden noticed a change when they played with her this summer. “They said I got better,” Noyan said. “They said I got more consistent.”

Noyan, who originally planned to attend the University of San Francisco, got a late start in her transition to the American version of the sport. She played for Sweden’s U20 team last summer, too, and didn’t arrive on Grounds until close to the start of the 2023-24 academic year. That marked only her second time in the U.S., and she deal with some culture shock on and off the court.

“She wasn’t here until August,” Jones said, “so she missed that freshman summer, where you’re able to work the kinks out, get used to the speed of the game, get used to academics, get used to everything that a first-year has to go through. So by the time she figured it out, we were kind of deep in the conference play. But you saw she had moments and flashes in there where you could see what she’s going to be in the future.

“As the year went on, I think she adjusted to the speed of the game and the physicality of it, a different kind of athleticism.”

The pace of play in the U.S. is faster than in Sweden, Noyan said, but as she grew more comfortable at Virginia last season, “it kind of slowed the game down for me so I could see and I could read the actions a little bit better.”

Her playing time increased as the season progressed, and “I got more comfortable in my role and more confident in the playing style we have here,” Noyan said.

The coaching staff has noticed changes in Noyan since she’s been back at JPJ, where her teammates have been training since last month.

“She just looks poised,” Jones said. “She looks comfortable. She knows what to expect now. She has a year under her belt in the system. She’s been stepping into that leadership role of being able to coach up a first-year or be able to bring somebody along, so I’m really excited about that, and she looks better athletically. She’s quicker, she’s stronger, I feel like she’s more confident in her skill set and know what she can do, so that hesitancy is not there of not being quite sure what to do. She’s just going hard.”

Noyan attempted only 11 shots from beyond the 3-point arc last season, but she made four of them.

“She has the ability to stretch the defense and shoot the 3,” Jones said. “She has the ability to score inside. I think something she’s really focusing on right now is rebounding and pushing the break in transition, because she can handle the ball, and that will allow us to play fast like we want to play. She’s a good passer as well.”

Noyan said she’s more comfortable on the court as she heads into her second year at UVA. “Much more,” she said, “because now I know the way we play and I know a lot of the [NCAA] rules I didn’t know before.”

If she was hesitant at times, as a newcomer to the team and to the U.S., to speak up last season, that won’t be the case in 2024-25, Noyan said. “I felt like I had a lot of thoughts that I could have said last year from my past experience [in basketball] that I didn’t say, because I felt like, ‘Oh, they can have their time to say what they want.’ But this year I’m gonna speak up a little bit more and be more vocal.”

Jones said the coaching staff encourages all of the team’s players to speak up. “Everybody’s voice is valued here. It’s not like one person has a platform and somebody else doesn’t. Everybody has that freedom to speak up and bring and add to the culture and enhance the culture, and I think she’s settled and feels good about that, being able to add her voice, understanding that it’s coming from the right place and from somebody who’s been through it. So everything that she’s gonna bring to the table, experience-wise, is gonna be welcome.”

Language wasn’t a barrier for Noyan, who’s fluent in Swedish, English and Syriac. Still, she had to learn “a new culture and how stuff works here” in 2023-24, and that wasn’t always easy. “So I’m more comfortable being here now,” Noyan said.

As a first-year, she roomed with Elizabeth Imoh from the UVA track & field team. Noyan is living this year with Latasha Lattimore, a transfer from the University of Miami.

Noyan has two brothers and a sister. Her father and one of her brothers came to see her here late last season and attended UVA’s regular-season finale, a Commonwealth Clash showdown with No. 5 Virginia Tech at JPJ. The Hoos upset the Hokies 80-75 that night before a crowd of 11,976, the largest ever to witness a women’s basketball game in this state, and the atmosphere wowed Noyan’s family members.

“They were talking about it for weeks back home,” Noyan said.

The basketball authority in the family is the soft-spoken forward who wears jersey No. 12 for the Cavaliers. Her mother played a little hoops in high school, Noyan said, “but nothing more than that. My dad was a boxer.”

Noyan smiled. “They try talking like they know basketball, but they don’t really know exactly.”

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