Dress Rehearsal Up Next for Cavaliers

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — For the University of Virginia women’s basketball team, the 2024-25 season officially starts Monday night with a non-conference game against American at John Paul Jones Arena.

Fans wanting to get a sneak peek at the Cavaliers, however, can do so Thursday night at JPJ. At 6 o’clock, UVA hosts Division II Barton College in an exhibition game.

Not every program chooses to play preseason exhibitions, but this will be the third straight year Virginia has done so. In each of the past two seasons, the Wahoos hosted Division II Pitt-Johnstown at JPJ, and they won going away each time: 92-45 in 2022 and 102-51 last year.

“The exhibition games are just great, because it’s a chance to get under the lights,” UVA head coach Amaka Agugua-Hamilton told reporters Monday afternoon. “Obviously, we probably won’t have as many fans as we do for a real game, but we’ll have some fans. So get under the lights, get the jitters out, just play and have some fun.

“Obviously, you’re always competing to win, but I think it’s just an opportunity for us to continue to gel together in a game setting, because with practice, everything’s kind of just set up and we go against our scout team. [An exhibition] is just a good opportunity to play against somebody else and showcase our ability to play together and play through mistakes and things like that. So you learn from those situations and then usually, if it goes the right way, everybody gets a chance to get on the floor and just get under the lights.”

The Hoos, who are in their third year under Agugua-Hamilton, are coming off a season in which they finished 16-16 after losing in the second round of the inaugural Women’s Basketball Invitation Tournament. Among the returning players from that team are Kymora Johnson, Paris Clark, Olivia McGhee, Yonta Vaughn, Edessa Noyan and Taylor Lauterbach.

“Our returners are very hungry,” Agugua-Hamilton said. “We were a couple games away from the NCAA tournament. But there were so many games that there were controllables where we could have probably changed the outcome if we just were detail-oriented and had the same energy and effort and intent. So our returners were for the most part pretty young [last season] and learned a lot of lessons through all of that. So they’re very hungry.”

Four transfers have joined the program since the end of last season: Latasha Lattimore (Miami), RyLee Grays (North Carolina), Casey Valenti-Paea (Long Beach State) and Hawa Doumbouya (Maryland). The 6-foot-7 Doumbouya will redshirt this season, Agugua-Hamilton said, but the other three transfers will play, and they’re eager to contribute.

“So I think the overall vibe of the group is we have something to prove,” Agugua-Hamilton said. “I think that’s when you know you’re in a good place, because nobody’s complacent, nobody’s coming into practice and not giving their all.”

The Wahoos’ roster includes three freshmen: forward Breona Hurd and guards Payton Dunbar and Kamryn Kitchen. Hurd will definitely play this season. Dunbar and Kitchen arrived on Grounds in August after reclassifying after graduating from high school a year early. The initial plan was for both to redshirt this season, but Agugua-Hamilton said Monday that no final decisions have been reached on Dunbar and Kitchen.

The 6-foot-7 Doumbouya will use the redshirt year to polish her skills and work on her conditioning.

“She wants to be the best player she can possibly be before she gets out on the court,” Agugua-Hamilton said. “And I think when she was at her previous school, there were some things she needed to work through and we’ve been doing that. She’s in a great place, she’s playing well, she’s on the scout team for us now, just playing on the scout team and making us better.”

FULL SPEED AHEAD: Agugua-Hamilton doesn’t like to compare her teams, but she said her latest group is more athletic than the 2023-24 Cavaliers. “So we can get up and down, we can play fast,” she said.

Virginia’s starting guards, Johnson and Clark, still “play very, very fast,” Agugua-Hamilton said, “but now they have people that are running with them and they feel like we can kind of get the looks we’re looking for in transition. But then defensively we can do more things I think that we haven’t done in the past just because of the length and athleticism.”

Johnson, a 5-foot-7 sophomore, also singled out the Cavaliers’ athletic ability. “In practice, I’m blown away by how fast we get up and down the floor, how many rebounds we get and that sort of thing,” she said.

RISING STAR: Johnson led the Hoos in scoring, assists, steals and 3-pointers made last season, when she was named second-team All-ACC, and was second on the team in rebounds. She did all that despite playing with a foot injury that required offseason surgery.

Her rehabilitation gave Johnson an opportunity “to work on other parts of her game,” Agugua-Hamilton said. “The biggest development that she needed to have, the biggest jump she needed to have, was leadership, but then also decision-making on the court, and that was one thing we talked a lot about … She’s way more comfortable in the system. She’s way more comfortable understanding time, score possessions, understanding when she needs to take over, when she needs to get people involved, just the flow of the game, when we can go fast, when we need to run offense, things like that. So I think mentally she’s had a huge jump, because she was thrown in the fire as a first-year and that’s not easy, especially being a point guard.”

HOT TICKET: The Cavaliers averaged 4,652 fans for their home games in 2023-24, and Agugua-Hamilton expects the atmosphere at JPJ to keep improving.

“We’re garnering a lot of attention,” she said, “and we just gotta continue to put on a show for them, for lack of a better term. I think it’s going to translate into recruiting, it’s going to translate into all areas of our program. I love how the community is getting behind us. That was really awesome last year. They helped get us over the hump, and I think it’s going to be even more consistent this year.”

SHOW TIME: When Agugua-Hamilton said Monday that the Cavaliers “definitely do have somebody that can dunk,” she was referring to 6-foot-4 Latasha Lattimore.

“Very, very athletic,” Agugua-Hamilton said. “She’s the one that can dunk with ease, but that’s not even the best part of her game.”

Lattimore, who’s from Ontario, Canada, began her college career at Texas in 2021-22 and then transferred to the University of Miami, where she spent two seasons.

She’s torn her ACL twice, which has limited her impact, but when healthy Lattimore is “a three-level scorer,” Agugua-Hamilton said, “and just defensively does so much, because she’s long … [and] can block shots, rebound, run on the floor, things like that. So I think she’s going to have a year that maybe others didn’t really see coming. She’s getting healthy.”

Lattimore has never dunked in a game, but if she gets the ball on a breakaway, she said Monday, “I’m going to try it. It’s going to happen.”

She tried to dunk once in a high school game, “but we weren’t there yet,” Lattimore said, smiling.

Having experienced two serious knee injuries, Lattimore is working closely with the team’s strength and conditioning coach, Justin Westbrook, and trying to eat well, “because that’s where I kind of lacked in the past few years,” she said.

“So  making sure I keep my body strong, I eat right, I get my sleep at night, and just keeping my head mentally there, so when I get into a game I’m very confident and I’m ready to go.”

Coming out of high school, Lattimore said, she didn’t take nutrition and strength training seriously. She knows better now. “Because of my build and how slim I am, I definitely need to get the extra protein, the extra weights,” she said. “I would say definitely [the injuries] changed my mind a whole lot, and I’m way more mature than I was in the past few years.”

GREEN LIGHT: As a freshman in 2023-24, Edessa Noyan attempted only 11 shots from 3-point range. (She made four of them.) Agugua-Hamilton wants the 6-foot-3 forward to shoot more from long range this season, and Noyan will happily comply.

“I think I’m more confident in just taking my shot,” said Noyan, a native of Sweden. “Last year I passed up a lot of open shots that I didn’t take, so I’m gonna shoot them this year.”

FAST LEARNERS: Neither Payton Dunbar nor Kamryn Kitchen took part in the Cavaliers’ summer practices, but they’ve “merged right in with the team seamlessly,” Agugua-Hamilton said. “Both are very, very competitive. Both are hard workers. Both can really shoot the ball, but then also have some other things to their game.”

Kitchen is from Charlotte, N.C. Dunbar is from the Southwest Virginia town of Narrows, about 30 miles west of Blacksburg.

Coming in with Dunbar, with whom she shares a dormitory room, has made her transition to college life easier, Kitchen said. “It’s nice to know that someone’s going through what you’re going through. All of us come from different places and are going through different things, but to know that I’m in the same situation basketball-wise with someone is really nice.”

Kitchen committed to UVA in early June, after which she began recruiting Dunbar.

“She actually [direct-messaged] me on Instagram when I got my Virginia Tech offer and was like, ‘You know the next move. That’s not where to go,’ ” Dunbar recalled Monday with a smile. “So that’s when we officially connected online. I asked her questions about why she committed to UVA. And that helped me make my decision a little bit, just to get some insider info on somebody who’s already committed.”

To receive Jeff White’s articles by email, click the appropriate box in this link to subscribe.