The final exam break over, the women hosted UMES in the first of their two last tune up games before the season really begins: away to Notre Dame just before the New Year.  How did the women do?  Let’s take a look.

Plus

A win is a win is a win.  This was a scrappy UMES team that took 8-4 and 14-10 leads early in the first quarter and the game was all knotted up at the half 33-33.  Despite only having two players over six feet, UMES has the 54th best rebounding differential in the country and pounded the Cavs on the offensive boards.  For the game, UMES took 11 more shots than Virgina.  Ashanti Lynch scored all 16 of her points in the first half and this team was gunning for an upset.  Virginia’s second half response was their best of the year.

Plus

Third frame is the charm.  In Virginia’s six wins, the team has “won” the third quarter every time.  Their record when they are outscored is 1-5.  Virgina won the battle in the third, outscoring UMES 22-13 and then outscoring them in the 4th 25-18.  It helped that the three-ball starting falling.  After going a dismal 2/10 from deep in the first half, the Hoos responded by going 6/13 in the second half. 

Minus

Coach Agugua-Hamilton’s rotations are still in flux, and it’s late in the season to still be tinkering with lineups.  Part of this is due to injury.  While Paris Clark returned this game and Edessa Noyan is still shaking off the after-effects of missing six games, Yonta Vaughn missed the game.  Coach Mox has a three-year track record of going 10-deep in her rotations, but Casey Valenti-Paea, Payton Dunbar and RyLee Grays totaled just seven scrubs’ minutes as Mox rode her top seven, in, as I said, an uncharacteristic manner. Dunbar got her first career start and then promptly vanished. There’s not a lot of time left to figure this out.

Plus

For years, free throw shooting has been a strength of this team, but this season the women have been as unreliable as the men from the charity stripe.  Virginia went 20/24 from the line (83.3%) in their best performance of the season.  Latasha Lattimore started the season shooting 51%, but she’s 12/13 over the past three games.

Plus

Longtime Miami coach Katie Meier retired at the end of last season and Wahoo fans owe her a debt of gratitude. If she hadn’t retired, UVA wouldn’t have Lattimore, who has been a revelation these past four games averaging 17.5 points and 9.8 rebounds a game.  She has effectively replaced the loss of Camryn Taylor and on the night she had 18 points and a monstrous 15 boards.  She is improving at the free throw line.  Most importantly, she’s cut down on her fouls so she’s available for crunch time.

Minus

It was a rough start for the Cavaliers as they had 11 turnovers in the first half.  UMES played well and I so enjoyed watching them play that I am going to make the trek down to Princess Anne, Maryland in early January to see them take on Howard.  However, this is still a low-major team.  This past weekend at George Mason, the Hawks were shut out at the end of the first quarter and down 25-0 before they scored their first points.  And yet Ashanti Lynch sliced through the Cavalier defense for 16 first-half points.  With Paris Clark still not at full speed, the women do not have a lock-down perimeter defender.

Plus

Kymora Johnson is a baller.  She led the team in scoring (again) with 24 even if she was just 2/7 from deep.  She’s a superb free throw shooter (6/6 on the night) and she had nine rebounds, six assists and two steals.

Read More: Five Takeaways

Plus

With Edessa Noyan back, Taylor Lauterbach can slide down to the back of the rotation where she can better lead the bench unit.  Lauterbach is an imposing presence (5 blocks and two steals) and she was perfect shooting the ball: 3/3 from the floor and 2/2 from the charity stripe.  Her 23 +/- was the highest of any player tonight.

Plus

After Johnson and Lattimore, who is going to be Virginia’s third scorer? It might be Hurd, it might be Clark, but I think the best version of this team has Olivia McGhee as that third player.  She’s mobile, big for a wing, and she runs the court better than anyone. She has a beautiful stroke and possibly the best elevation of anyone in the women’s game. And yet she’s a streaky shooter. Today we saw scary McGhee as she went 5/10 from the floor and 3/6 from beyond the arc. 

There were a pair of three-play sequences that basically won the game, one in the first quarter and one in third.  McGhee was central in both of those.  In the first, down 14-10, McGhee hit a three. Virginia blocked a shot and sprung Mo for an easy fast break bucket.  Then McGhee got a steal and fed Lattimore for an equally easy three. 

Virginia scored seven points in 45 seconds and would go into the second quarter up 22-14.  In the third, up just 45-42, McGhee had a steal and fed Johnson for the break.  Next play she deflected the ball, Johnson got the steal and repaid the favor to McGhee on the break.  And then McGhee scored on the next possession.  It was 51-43 and UMES didn’t threaten again.

When McGhee is on and engaged (remember, she was a coach’s decision not to play last game) this team has potential.  In terms of this team’s ceiling, McGhee is the bellwether.

Next Up:  Virginia has one more tune-up game left, Saturday, December 21st at 1:00pm.  The game is on ACC Network Extra.

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