Hoos Start Roussell Era on Winning Note

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — After his first game as the University of Virginia’s head women’s basketball coach, a resounding win over Maryland Eastern Shore, Aaron Roussell took the microphone Monday night at John Paul Jones Arena. He thanked the crowd for its support, saluted the Cavalier band and invited fans to stick around and meet his team.

Roussell is looking forward to many more such celebrations at JPJ. So are his players.

“It was really fun,” said fourth-year guard Kymora Johnson, who finished with 21 points, four rebounds, four assists, two steals and only one turnover in UVA’s 87-45 win over UMES.

Johnson, an All-America candidate, already ranks among the finest players in program history. With 1,746 career points, she’s now eighth all-time at UVA, and only former Sharnee Zoll (785) and Dawn Staley (729) have had more assists as Cavaliers than Johnson (562).

Tonight’s 𝙋𝙡𝙖𝙮 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙂𝙖𝙢𝙚! 🔥 #GoHoos https://t.co/WQxdOwrvV4

— Virginia Women's Basketball (@UVAWomensHoops) November 3, 2026

Roussell, who came to Virginia last spring after seven seasons at the University of Richmond, has coached Johnson in practice for months, and he saw her play in three preseason exhibition games this fall. Watching her dominate in a game, though, was a different experience.

“I'm glad we have her,” Roussell said, smiling. “Even during the scrimmages, you saw pieces of it, but I don't think I saw [the real] Kymora. They pushed Kymora's buttons a couple times today, and so that was cool, to watch that reaction. She was in gamer mode at that point.

“It was just enjoyable to watch, enjoyable to coach her, And I think that's a relationship that you always want to have with your best player, especially when she's a point guard. I think there were a couple times it was like, ‘Yo, man, what do you want? What are you feeling?’ And she'll get more comfortable with that. I think I'll get more comfortable with kind of letting her have the reins a little bit. I enjoyed it. It was fun.”

Johnson averaged 37.2 minutes per game in 2025-26, when she led the Wahoos to the NCAA tournament’s Sweet Sixteen. She played 27 minutes against UMES (0-1) and got multiple breaks.. Watching from the bench allowed her to not only “see the game from another lens,” Johnson said, “but also just breathe a little bit, relax, reset.”

This is the fourth school at which Roussell has been head coach—the others were the University of Chicago, Bucknell and UR—so debuts are nothing new to him. Still, he said, “you’d be lying if you said there weren't some nerves. You really want to play well with the new crowd. It was cool walking out, to be honest with you.”

After the opening tip, however, it “felt like just a basketball game,” Roussell said, “and I think that's probably [a result of] being a little bit older and doing this for as long as that we have. Maybe it helped having a few scrimmages as well.”

The Hawks, who were picked to finish third in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, started only one player taller than 5-foot-10, and they tried to make up for their lack of size with defensive pressure.

It took the Hoos a while to get comfortable. They trailed 6-4 with 5:20 left in the first quarter. They soon settled down, though, and broke the game open with an 11-0 run. Virginia led 22-8 after the first quarter, 43-19 at halftime and 65-35 after three quarters.

“I think as a coach, you want to come out in that first game and really just start clicking from the first tip,” Roussell said. “That wasn't the case. I kind of told myself going into it that it'd be great to click right away. But probably more than likely, you probably just need to find a way to get to that first media timeout [to regroup], and I thought that's what happened.”

A new era starts with a W! #GoHoos https://t.co/gJEo8BwZZm

— Virginia Women's Basketball (@UVAWomensHoops) November 3, 2026

Led by Johnson, four Cavaliers scored in double figures, and two of them recorded double-doubles. Breona Hurd, a 6-foot-2 third-year, totaled 11 points, 12 rebounds and five steals, and 6-foot-5 third-year Adeang Ring came off the bench to contribute 13 points and 10 rebounds. Fifth-year guard Mary-Anna Asare, a transfer from VCU, added 10 points.

“Overall, really proud of our players,” Roussell said. “We knew this was going to be a challenging game. I think sometimes you may look at the score, and that was not indicative of the respect I had for [UMES} and how much I knew this was going to be a challenge today.”

The double-double was the second of Hurd’s career. She didn’t score in the first half but found other ways to make an impact. Her mindset, Hurd said, was to “do anything to help the team get the win, to rebound, hustle on defense, get a stop, do anything extra that I can.”

Ring, who averaged 3.6 points and 2.5 rebounds in 11.7 minutes per game in 2025-26, is likely to have a much larger role this season.

“She’s been really focused on her craft in the gym a lot, always wanting to get better, always looking for the next thing to improve on,” Johnson said. “Obviously, we need everyone to play a big part this year, so I'm excited to see what that looks like for her.”

Virginia’s roster consists of five returning players and eight newcomers. Holdovers from last season include Ring, Hurd and Olivia McGhee, and they’ll be “asked to do a little bit more, maybe a lot more, than what they were doing last year,” Roussell said. And so “getting [Ring] on the floor for 21 minutes, I thought was a huge step for her today ... She made things difficult with her length, and we need to have that. And I think when she's good, she's really, really good. We have high expectations, a high ceiling for her in the future.”

The opener started a stretch of three games in seven days for the Cavaliers. They’ll play at Davidson on Thursday night before returning home to host William & Mary in a Sunday matinee at JPJ.

The Hoos were short-handed Monday. In addition to center Tabitha Amanze, who’s recovering from a torn ACL, guards Eris Lester and Emilie Brzoňová were unavailable because of injuries. But Roussell said he doesn’t expect it to be “long before we’re as close to fully loaded as we’re going to get.”

Lester, a third-year, is a transfer from Alabama. Brzoňová is a first-year from the Czech Republic. Her classmates in the Cavaliers’ program are guards Sintija Aukštikalnytė and Erica Gribble and forward Lyla Coogen, and those three combined on 17 points and five assists against UMES..

Aukštikalnytė is from Lithuania, and, with the “international experience that she has, doesn't probably feel like a freshman,” Roussell said. “But I thought she played well, and I thought the other two really stepped up.”

The Cavaliers will need more of that as the season progresses.

“I think we're going to be really hard to guard if we cannot rely on Kymora,” Rousell said.

He smiled. “I’m not a complete moron here; we need to center this around Kamora. But if we can have that—it’s not right to say supporting cast—but just have some of the others have their shine at times, I think that's going to make us better.”

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