Hoos Give Fans Reason to Cheer in ACC Win

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — With 1:43 to play in the third quarter, Wake Forest’s Demeara Hinds went to the line for two free throws Thursday night. She missed the first, and the volume level grew inside John Paul Jones Arena. Another miss would mean fans could claim free french fries from McDonald’s, and Hinds obliged, to the delight of the home crowd.

On the floor, Virginia’s players didn’t stop to celebrate. Latasha Lattimore grabbed the rebound of Hinds’ second miss and started a fast break that ended with a pass from Kymora Johnson to Olivia McGhee, who was fouled while making a contested layup. McGhee added the free throw, and that capped a 12-0 spurt that helped the Cavaliers pull away for a 69-46 win.

UVA scored the first nine points in that run on 3-pointers by Lattimore, Breona Hurd and Johnson. For the game, the Wahoos (9-6 overall, 1-2 ACC) shot 40 percent from beyond the arc, and they were 8 for 16 from long range in the second half.

Virginia came in shooting 29.9 percent from 3-point range. “So it wasn’t terrible,” head coach Amaka Agugua-Hamilton said, “but this is going to help us.”

Six players made at least one trey each for the Wahoos, led by Hurd, a 6-foot-2 freshman from Waynesville, Mo. She was 3 for 4 from long range and 6 for 7 overall. Her only miss came in the game’s final minute.

Hurd, who started Virginia’s first 11 games, has come off the bench in the past four. She finished with 15 points, six rebounds and a game-high two blocked shots against Wake (7-6, 0-2).

For the season, Hurd is third on the team in scoring (10.5) and second in rebounding (6.0 per game). But she’s been prone to turnovers and is shooting only 38.5 percent from the floor (and 26.4 percent from 3-point range).

“I’ve had my downs,” Hurd said, “but my teammates have been pushing me to play harder and to just keep pushing. [They] keep installing confidence in me.”

Hurd and Johnson joined their head coach at the postgame press conference.

“Bre’s very talented,” Agugua-Hamilton said. “I think freshman year—and [Johnson] can attest to this, having gone through freshman year last year—there’s ups and downs. You gotta weather the storm, you gotta figure out the ACC, you gotta figure out how to play when you’re tired, you gotta figure out so many things … So she just had to get back on track, and I think she did.”

“It wasn’t like she wasn’t playing hard or anything like that. It was just sometimes you get into situations where you’re second-guessing yourself a little bit, and we just have to continue to remind her she has a bright future here. She’s a really good player. She plays multiple positions. She’s physical. She can do multiple things and she’s going to be a big part of our success. So it was good to see her get back on track tonight.”

Coming off the bench hasn’t affected her approach, Hurd said. “I just know when I get on the court I need to play my hardest and be there for the team, do whatever the team needs me to do.”

For the fourth consecutive game, UVA played without junior guard Yonta Vaughn, who’s dealing with a medical issue. Vaughn has started seven of the nine games in which she’s played this season. She’s averaging 4.2 assists per game, second only to Johnson (4.9) on the team.

In Vaughn’s absence, Johnson played all 40 minutes Thursday night and, as usual, sparkled. The sophomore from Charlottesville totaled 16 points, seven rebounds, eight assists and three steals.

“Hopefully we’ll get Yonta back soon,” Agugua-Hamilton said, “but I’m comfortable leaning on Mo like that … She’s used to playing a lot of minutes, and obviously, Yonta, when she comes back, that’ll help. We play them both together, and also we can get Mo out of the game. [Vaughn gives Virginia] another point guard that understands the system, can get us organized, things like that. But Mo’s gonna do whatever she needs to do to help the team, that’s what kind of kid she is. Great players play minutes like that. You just have to be able to do that, and she does a great job of recovering and taking care of her body and things like that.”

Johnson, who leads the Hoos in scoring (17.8 ppg), took only 12 shots Wednesday night, several times passing up open looks to set up teammates. Lattimore, a 6-foot-4 redshirt junior, contributed 13 points and seven rebounds.

“I think that most of all for me it was just pushing the pace and keeping everybody going and not letting up,” Johnson said. “When I get in transition and I get on fast breaks, everyone tries to stop me. So then I know that I have to kick the ball out, make the right decision, don’t force a shot if there’s a better one open.”

The Cavaliers led by 13 points late in the first quarter, but their sloppy ball-handling let the Demon Deacons climb back into the game. At the half, Virginia had 14 turnovers and Wake had cut its deficit to two.

Among ACC teams, only Cal (269) has more turnovers than UVA (267) this season, and those errors have contributed heavily to the Cavaliers’ uneven play. But in the third quarter Thursday night, when the Hoos blew the game open, they had only two turnovers, the second of which came in the final seconds of the period.

“We want to play fast, but we also want to do it under control,” Johnson said. “Turnovers have obviously been something that’s plagued us this entire season, and so we’ve been really working on that, but coming out of the half we were like, ‘We have to limit the turnovers, we have to possess the ball,’ because every possession matters in ACC play.”

The Cavaliers were coming off a one-sided loss to No. 3 Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., “and I thought we played together [against Wake],” Agugua-Hamilton said. “Was it a perfect game? No, it’s not going to be, but I think we got better, and we just gotta keep taking steps forward.”

UVA and Wake faced each other twice last season. The first meeting was in Winston-Salem, N.C., where the Hoos defeated the Deacs 87-79. The rematch came in the ACC tournament’s first round. With a minute left in the third quarter, Virginia led by 15 points, but Wake rallied for a 58-55 victory at the Greensboro Coliseum.

Agugua-Hamilton brought up that game as the Cavaliers prepared for the Deacs’ visit to JPJ.

“Who’s to say, but I think we would have had a shot at the NCAA tournament if we didn’t lose in the ACC tournament to them,” Agugua-Hamilton said. “So we talked about that as a little bit of motivation. But it doesn’t really matter who you’re playing, I think. Honestly, I believe that we can beat anybody in this conference and I believe that we can lose to anybody in this conference. So it’s about us and our intent and also competing for 40 minutes and weathering the storm when other people are going on runs or whatever and just stopping the bleeding. And I think we grew up [Thursday night], I really do. We punched really well to start, and then they punched back and it kind of was a close game, and then we punched again and they punched back and then we punched and separated ourselves. I think that’s growth for us and we just have to build on that.”

The Cavaliers don’t play again until next Thursday night, when they meet Clemson (9-5, 2-1) at Littlejohn Coliseum. Virginia has lost four straight to Clemson but leads the series 45-35.

“We have a bye week, which is great,” Agugua-Hamilton said. “I think it’s always good to regroup and also go into a bye week off of a win. We have some momentum, so obviously we need to take care of our bodies. We have kids that played a lot of minutes, so they gotta recover. But then we also gotta work on ourselves, work on our individual development.”

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