Smith Draws Strength from Teammates' SupportSmith Draws Strength from Teammates' Support

Smith Draws Strength from Teammates' Support

Redshirt junior Sa'Myah Smith starts at forward for Virginia, which meets TCU in the NCAA tournament's round of 16 on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. ET in Sacramento, Calif.

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

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — She had to recover from two knee operations in 2025, but those were minor setbacks compared to what University of Virginia forward Sa’Myah Smith experienced after the calendar flipped to 2026. In early January, her mother, Sherry Haynes, died.

Smith, who’s from the Texas side of Texarkana, has three brothers. She went home to be with her family after her mother passed away and considered sitting out the rest of the season. In the end, though, the 6-foot-2 redshirt junior chose to rejoin the team—as much for her teammates, she said, as for herself.

“They were my sisters,” Smith said Friday at Golden 1 Center.

As she mourned her mother’s passing, her teammates “were there every moment,” Smith said. “They showed up in ways that people don’t get to see.”

It hasn’t been as an easy season for Smith, who began her college career at LSU. She also lost a grandfather this year, but she’s pressed on and helped the Cavaliers return to the NCAA tournament’s Sweet Sixteen for the first time since 2000.

“I’m proud of her perseverance, her resiliency,” Virginia head coach Amaka Agugua-Hamilton said. “That's a lot. I'm somebody who's also lost my mother and I was a similar age to her ... It’s difficult to navigate, especially at a young age. So I'm just proud of her to be able to continue to fight through that.”

At 7:30 p.m. ET, game to air on ESPN, 10th-seeded UVA (22-11) meets No. 3 seed TCU (31-5), with the winner advancing to face No. 1 seed South Carolina or No. 4 seed Oklahoma in the Elite Eight.

Smith averages 8.0 points and a team-high 9.0 rebounds per game for the Wahoos, the first team to advance from the First Four to the Sweet Sixteen in the NCAA women’s tournament.

“There’s no other place I'd rather be doing it right now, no other people that I'd rather be doing it with,” Smith said Friday. “I mean, we’re making history. And it's fun when you have great people that you're around.”

Smith has the most NCAA tournament experience of any UVA player. As a freshman at LSU, she averaged 4.6 points and 4.0 rebounds per game for a team that won the NCAA title. She missed most of the next season with a torn ACL, but returned in 2024-25 to start 28 games for LSU.

“And so her bringing that experience and bringing what it takes to win in March has been tremendous,” said Agugua-Hamilton, who’s in her fourth season at UVA.

Until this month, Virginia hadn’t played in the NCAAs since 2018. Heading into the tournament, Smith said, she talked to her teammates “a lot about our mindset, our mentality, the toughness and how hard it was going to be. Every team that makes it to the tournament is good. You can't underestimate anybody, look over anybody.”

Smith didn’t have a big game in UVA’s First Four win over Arizona State in Iowa City, Iowa, but two days later she scored a career-high 23 points (on 10-for-12 shooting) and pulled down 11 rebounds to help Virginia rally for an overtime win over No. 7 seed Georgia. She also had four assists against the Lady Bulldogs.

That set up a second-round showdown for UVA with No. 2 seed Iowa in front of a partisan crowd at Carver-Hawkeye Arena, and Smith grabbed 10 rebounds Monday as the Hoos prevailed in double overtime.

“It feels amazing,” Smith said of being in the Sweet Sixteen. “I mean, this is what we play all year for. This is what you really want to do.”

Her brothers weren’t able to make the trip to Sacramento, Smith said, but her father is in town to cheer her on.

Her closest friends on the team include Romi Levy, who like Smith transferred to UVA after the 2024-25 school year. Levy, a graduate student, marvels at how Smith has persevered through adversity.

“I’m really proud of her,” Levy said. “It’s really, really tough to go through something like this. I can't even imagine, but she's doing amazing.”

Sa'Myah Smith (5)Sa'Myah Smith (5)

Agugua-Hamilton said Smith has needed her teammates “to uplift her and allow her to continue to fight, because there's times where it was just really rough for her. But she said she wanted to be here for this team, for this coaching staff, and this is even before the NCAA tournament happened.

“So I'm just really happy that she's persevering and being strong. And when she has her days where it's a hard day, we're there for her. But she's also there for the team. So it's kind of both ways. But it's been really special for me just watching her kind of flourish.”

At the Sacramento Kings’ arena Saturday night, Virginia will face an opponent with more experience on this stage. This is the second straight trip to the Sweet Sixteen for TCU, a member of the Big 12. The Horned Frogs advanced to the third round with an overtime win over Washington.

Virginia is looking to win a fourth game in an NCAA tournament for the first time since 1991. The key for the Cavaliers, Smith said, is “just controlling what we can control. I I think it's just about showing up and having fun, but doing it together and just competing for 40 minutes.”

The game will showcase two of the nation’s top guards: UVA junior Kymora Johnson (19.5 ppg) and TCU’s Olivia Miles (19.4 ppg), a graduate transfer from Notre Dame.

In high school, Miles starred at Blair Academy in New Jersey, where her teammates included Tabitha Amanze, who now starts at center for Virginia.

“When we figured out we were playing each other [in Sacramento], our high school coach put us in a group chat, and it was fun,” Amanze said Friday.

Miles has “always been amazing at passing the ball, at scoring,” Amanze said, “but it's also been very inspiring, I guess, to see how much she's also blossomed at the collegiate level as well.”

The Cavaliers arrived in California on Wednesday, and their long wait is about to end. When the tournament started, few people outside John Paul Jones Arena would have predicted a Sweet Sixteen appearance for UVA, but Agugua-Hamilton never lost faith in her team.

“I've always believed in this group,” she said. “We've had some ups and downs through the course of the season. We've had a lot of adversity, a lot of adversity that people know about, some that you don't know about and some that we keep in-house. But there's been a lot of things that has derailed this team a little bit, but then we got back on track ... We've been a good team all year but we're starting to click at the right time.”

This postseason run, Levy said, has “been amazing. I think you can see the growth with this group and how much we love each other and how much passion we have for each other. I can't even put it into words yet. I think that we don't even understand how big this moment is and how far we've come. I’m just proud of this group, proud of myself, proud of our staff. It's a great way to finish my college career.”

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

Amaka Agugua-HamiltonAmaka Agugua-Hamilton