Hoos Shift Focus to Postseason

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Seconds away from securing the biggest comeback win in program history, the University of Virginia women’s basketball team instead experienced heartbreak in its regular-season finale.

A controversial call with 1.7 seconds left sent Virginia Tech’s Carleigh Wenzel to the line for two free throws, and she made both to put the Hokies up 83-82 at John Paul Jones Arena. A Cavalier timeout advanced the ball to the frontcourt, but forward Sa’Myah Smith’s 3-point attempt was off the mark as time expired Sunday afternoon.

A Senior Day ceremony followed at JPJ, after which UVA head coach Amaka Agugua-Hamilton thanked the crowd for supporting her team all season.

“Sorry we didn’t pull this one out tonight for you guys,” she said, “but, most importantly, sorry we didn’t pull it out for our seniors ... I can promise you, we are not done. We are not done this season. We’re going into the ACC tournament, and we’re going to compete, and we’re going to fight. And then after that we’re going to the NCAA tournament.”

The ACC tournament starts Wednesday in Duluth, Ga., about 25 miles northeast of Atlanta. Virginia (19-10 overall), which earned a first-round bye, is seeded No. 8 and will meet No. 9 seed Clemson (20-10) in a second-round game Thursday at 11 a.m. at Gas South Arena.

Both teams finished with regular season 11-7 in ACC play, but the Cavaliers defeated the Tigers 73-63 at JPJ on New Year’s Day and thus won the tiebreaker for the No. 8 seed.

After recording their best win of the season on Feb. 22—a 74-72 upset of then-No. 8 Louisville at the KFC Yum! Center—the Wahoos had two opportunities to significantly improve their postseason résumé. They didn’t capitalize on either one.

“We've got to fix some things,” said Agugua-Hamilton, who’s in her fourth season at Virginia. “We've got to get our fight back. We've got to just get ourselves back on track and go in there one game at a time [at the ACC tournament] and do what we know we can do.”

The victory over Louisville capped a stretch in which the Hoos won four of five games. Against No. 21 North Carolina, however, UVA started slowly, trailed by 17 at the half and lost 82-70.

Against Virginia Tech, UVA trailed 39-16 with five minutes to play in the first half. The Hoos stormed back in the second half and, on senior guard Paris Clark’s free throw with 24.2 seconds remaining, took their first lead since 2-0. But the Hokies extended their final possession with two offensive rebounds, and Wenzel drove and was rewarded with two free throws despite minimal contact from Virginia’s Romi Levy.

Agugua-Hamilton’s message to her team afterward?

“I apologized in the locker room that we didn't get it done for the seniors,” she said. “I think everybody feels that way. You never want to send your seniors off in their last game in this arena with a loss. And then I just talked about how I still truly believe in our players, in this group, in this team.”

Wenzel, who scored 23 points against Virginia at Cassell Coliseum, had 29 for the Hokies (22-8, 12-6) on Sunday.

Kymora Johnson, an All-America candidate, scored 25 of her team-high 26 points in the second half to fuel the Cavaliers’ comeback. Clark finished with 16 points, and center Tabitha Amanze contributed 11 points, seven rebounds and two blocked shots.

“I don’t think anything really changed,” Johnson said of Virginia’s second-half turnaround. “I think I just wasn't hitting my shots in the first half, unfortunately. I knew I was still trying to get my teammates involved. [The Hokies] were hitting their shots, and we had to start hitting ours. And I knew it was going to come, so I just kept shooting, stayed focused, and it happened.”

Not since the 2017-18 season have the Cavaliers advanced to the NCAA tournament. In its latest projections, ESPN.com has UVA as a No. 10 seed and one of the last at-large teams in the field. Clemson is projected as a No. 10 seed, too.

Virginia Tech, which won both of its regular-season games against UVA, is projected as a No. 9 seed.

Agugua-Hamilton said she didn’t discuss the postseason implications of the regular-season finale with her team ahead of the game.

“It’s not really good to put that kind of pressure on your players, and so I didn't address that,” she said, “I just addressed we were trying to give back for what we lost on their court. We needed to get a win.”

That goal eluded the Cavaliers, but “I do believe that we're in the NCAA tournament,” Agugua-Hamilton said, “and we're going to continue to prove that in the ACC tournament. Obviously, you want to continue to win, you want to finish the regular season strong, but I think we've done enough to make ourselves an NCAA tournament team.”

In the NET rankings, one of the pieces of data the NCAA tournament selection committee uses, UVA is No. 36 and Virginia Tech is No. 41. Those rankings were updated after Sunday’s games.

With the regular season complete, the stakes have been raised for the Cavaliers.

“The month of March is about urgency,” Agugua-Hamilton said, “and it's the best month of the year. It's a lot of fun. There's a lot of passion. There's a lot of joy. There's a lot of togetherness. There's a lot of competition, all of that stuff, but it's about urgency, and it's about staying present and staying in the moment, because, obviously, tomorrow's not promised.”

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