Amanze Thriving as Cavalier

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — When Tabitha Amanze entered the transfer portal last spring after three years at Princeton, neither she nor Virginia women’s basketball coach Amaka Agugua-Hamilton knew much about each other. But in their first conversation on the phone, they found common ground in their shared Nigerian heritage.

“I think that helped me be more comfortable,” Amanze recalled.

“That definitely is a bond,” Agugua-Hamilton said, “but I think more so what we bonded on is just my belief in her. I always tell Tabbie, ‘See yourself through my eyes,’ because sometimes kids limit themselves. They don't know how good they can be until they're pushed to be it."

The 6-foot 4 Amanze, who was 14 when she left her native Nigeria to attend school in the United States, found herself increasingly drawn to Agugua-Hamilton and UVA after she entered the portal.

“I wanted to go to a place where I felt like I still mattered independent of basketball,” Amanze said. “And just speaking to her on that phone call, I kind of had a sense of her as a person.”

A visit to UVA followed, and the coaching staff’s plans to help her develop as a player impressed Amanze, who had posted modest statistics at Princeton.

“And then I met the team and I was like, ‘I can see myself around these people. These are my kind of people,’ ” Amanze said. “The season’s long, so you want to have people you feel like you can lean on. And it just happened that a lot of [what UVA offered] matched what I was looking for.”

In her first season with the Cavaliers, Amanze has, along with fellow transfer Caitlin Weimar, provided consistent production from the frontcourt. Amanze is second on the team in scoring (10.5 ppg) and rebounding (6.8), and she leads UVA in blocked shots (34). She’s shooting 50.3% from the floor and 73.4% from the line.

“Tabbie is a very high-IQ basketball player,” said Agugua-Hamilton, whose parents were from Nigeria. “She wants to understand the game, so she works at that too. Loves to watch film. She sometimes holds on to her mistakes a little bit too much. She's got to let that go, but she wants to be great.”

Amanze has posted five double-doubles for UVA (15-6 overall, 7-3 ACC), which meets Virginia Tech (17-5, 7-3) in the first of two Smithfield Commonwealth Clash games Sunday at 2 p.m. in Blacksburg.

Agugua-Hamilton said she’s not sure why Amanze didn’t have a bigger role at Princeton, “but here, I don’t think anybody can guard Tabbie one-on-one. I always tell her, ‘The only person who can guard you is you.’ So we’ve really worked on her confidence, worked on her understanding of our system and what we need her to do. She's becoming more and more confident, more and more dominant on both sides of the ball. She is freaky athletic and physical. She can defend, block shots, rebound.”

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The Wahoos are coming off a triple-overtime win over Wake Forest in Winston-Salem, N.C. Amanze totaled 11 points and seven rebounds in that game before fouling out Thursday. Weimar, who’s also 6-foot-4, contributed a season-high 25 points and 10 rebounds in nearly 43 minutes off the bench.

She enjoys playing with Weimar, Amanze said. “I know when I'm on the court, I give my all. And when I'm on the bench, there's also somebody filling in that spot and giving their all as well. She’s just a great player. It's so fun.”

Amanze was about 12 when she started playing basketball with Hope 4 Girls Africa, a non-profit organization aimed at empowering young African women through sports. A close family friend, Onome Akinbode-James, who later played at Duke, had attended Blair Academy in New Jersey, and the prospect of following a similar path appealed to Amanze.

She enrolled as a boarding student at Blair as a ninth-grader and stayed at the school in Blairstown, N.J., through her high school graduation.

“Blair was one of the great experiences of my life,” said Amanze, who still talks regularly with Quinten Clarke, one of her coaches there. “I was very quiet as a kid—I still am a little bit—but it was amazing. I made a lot of friends that I still keep in touch with.”

Her high school career did not unfold as she expected. Amanze played for Blair as a freshman and sophomore, but the COVID-19 pandemic wiped out her junior year, and then she tore her right anterior cruciate ligament, an injury that sidelined her as a senior.

“And so I only played, you could argue, my two worst years,” Amanze said.

That didn’t keep Division I programs from pursuing Amanze, who’d played AAU ball for the New Jersey Demons. She wanted to be part of a program in which she could have an immediate impact, but that wasn’t her only priority.

“Being Nigerian, it’s just something that has been instilled in me at a very young age,” Amanze said. “I wanted to go to a place that had a good academic program. And at that time, Princeton just checked a lot of my boxes.”

Another injury—this one to her Achilles tendon—forced Amanze to sit out her freshman season at Princeton. In 2023-24, a stress fracture delayed her college debut, but she ended up playing in 15 games for the Ivy League champion Tigers.

Amanze appeared in 28 games last season, with two starts, and averaged 6.0 points and 4.0 rebounds. “And so last year was actually my full first year back playing basketball since tearing my ACL in high school,” she said.

Dissatisfied with the way her college career was progressing, Amanze began considering other options after the 2025-25 season.

“I honestly just threw my name in the portal,” she said. “My best-case scenario at the time was maybe take a year off basketball, focus on just getting the degree from Princeton and then maybe think about what to do when I leave. At the time, when put my name in there, I didn't know what to expect. I didn't even look too much into Virginia or any other school.”

At UVA, her playing time and her production have increased significantly.

“I think it's a better fit,” Amanze said. “It’s a system that uses post players differently and in a way that is beneficial to the post players, I think. And Coach Mox, she doesn't limit her players. She encourages you and allows you to try new stuff, try it in the game. You just feel comfortable enough to be yourself, be the player that you are.”

Amanze, who speaks four languages (Yoruba, English, West African Pidgin English and French), majored in economics at Princeton. She had to give up some of the credits she earned there when she enrolled at Virginia, which accepts only 60 credit hours from transfers, but she’s on track to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in economics this summer.

To say Amanze is challenging herself in the classroom at UVA would be an understatement. She took 15 credit hours last summer and 18 more in the fall. She’s taking 18 this spring while pursuing a minor in French. She plans to take another full load of classes in summer school.

She’ll be eligible to play another college season in 2026-27, but Amanze isn’t sure what the future holds for her.

“I spend a lot of time thinking about that, but I still don't have an answer yet,” she said. “I think there's value to staying in school, spending that extra year, whether it's [to get] a master's or whatever. So I think I would love to do that. But I'm not exactly sure what I would be doing after the ball stops bouncing. I'd love to give back to my community, to the people that support me.”

Amanze hasn’t been back to Nigeria for three years. Her parents and her five siblings are there, and Amanze said she’s likely to move home at some point. For now, though, she’s enjoying life on Grounds.

“It’s gone as good as I imagined,” Amanze said. “There are always things that I feel like I can work on personally and areas I feel like I can get better in, but in general I think it's been good. Good vibes, good camaraderie with teammates, good support from coaches.”

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