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Virginia Women's Basketball: The State of the Program
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- Virginia Women's Basketball: The State of the Program
Aaron Roussell on introduction day. | Virginia Athletics
Despite all the hoopla on the men's side - finishing second in the ACC and winning 30 games for the first time since being national champions - the women were actually more successful in the postseason, making the Sweet 16 for the first time in 25 years. The women, practically the last team selected, knocked off Arizona State, Georgia and then second-seed Iowa. It was a successful season by any metric.
And then the floor fell out from under the program as, days after the NCAA tournament, head coach Amaka Agugua-Hamilton was dismissed. The allegations were pretty damning, and Virginia moved on quickly. Mirroring the path that brought Ryan Odom to the men, Virginia again plucked a coach from Virginia's capital city, this time Aaron Roussell from the University of Richmond. And again, mirroring Odom, Roussell's first order of business was to convince a local St Annes-Belfield graduate, in this case Kymora Johnson, to stay.
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And stay she did. But not before entering the transfer portal and taking an official visit to South Carolina to meet with Dawn Staley. Staley is, of course, basketball royalty with a working knowledge of Coach Mox's program; she knew what she would need to say to convince Johnson to head to Columbia. It didn't work and Johnson returned to her roots and is ready for a banner season.
The Team
So it all starts with Kymora Johnson, who figures to be the second-best player in the ACC after Notre Dame's Hannah Hidalgo. In ACC pre-season voting, Johnson finished third for Player of the Year after Hidalgo and Duke's Toby Fornier, because, well, Duke. Johnson's scoring, assists, steals, and minutes have increased each year she's been in Charlottesville. She's the focal point of the team, but we learned last year that she is equally comfortable playing without the ball in her hands. I've worried for the past three years about her minutes load, but she never seems tired down the stretch.
One team weakness that I observed over the years, though, was an over-reliance on Johnson which hampered the fast break. Coach Mox preached fast play, but if every pass has to go to Johnson for her to bring the ball up the court, the break never really gets started. It will be interesting to see how Roussell balances Johnson's ball-dominance with the team's speed of play.
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Once Johnson re-committed, it seemed that all the other potential returners fell into line, with Olivia McGhee, Breona Hurd, Tabitha Amanze and Adeang Ring all re-signing in short order. Like the men, that is just about a starting lineup returning to Charlottesville, which is a rarity in this NIL-era of unlimited free agency.
Olivia McGhee is the most puzzling member of this quartet, and maybe she will be the one to benefit most from a new coach and a new coaching staff. McGhee hasn't put it all together yet. Like Johnson, she's a local girl who wanted to stay close to home, but she hasn't made the impact. She did miss most of last season and played in just four games. She is big for a wing, 6' 2", and she runs the court very well. She can square her shoulders in mid-air a la Kyle Guy, but she's not an effective three-point shooter. The form on her jumper is textbook, so I am not sure where the fix is going to come from, but right now, McGhee is still more potential than finished product.
Breona Hurd walked right into the starting lineup from day one as a freshman. She's an equally big wing, 6' 2", only she prefers to do her work closer to the rim. She bounced around the starting lineup for most of her second season to the point that I didn't really know what her role on the team was. Again, a player who might benefit just from the coaching change.
The most settled of this foursome would seem to be center Tabitha Amanze, who flourished as a starter after getting just bench minutes in two seasons at Princeton. Since the days of the dying Tina Thompson regime, much of the Cavalier identity has been shot-blocking and rebounding, especially of the offensive variety. Amanze performs admirably at both, though she's a streaky shooter. It never seemed to me that Virginia would emphasize getting the ball into Amanze's hands when she would score three times in four trips. She definitely has the potential to be as impactful as Latasha Lattimore, even if we didn't see it last year. She is apparently battling a leg injury so maybe tonight's game announcers will have some details.
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And the fourth player who may also be more successful in the Roussell regime is Adeang Ring ,a super-sized wing who was just starting to get comfortable in the three-and-D role before Coach Mox started playing her as a more conventional 4. I don't think she adapted particularly well and her shooting percentages cratered.
The most important newcomer is Mary-Anna Asare, who battled Rousell for three years while she was at VCU and he was at Richmond (both teams are in the Atlantic 10). She has the task of replacing Parris Clark, the team's second-leading scorer as well as the best off-ball defender in the ACC these past three years. Asare was the leading scorer this summer, representing Canada at FIBA's 3x3 U23 World Cup, and she scored 17+ points per game in her sophomore year at VCU. (Like McGhee, she played in only a handful of games last season, but it seems she's shaken the rust off her game already.)
Jeff White's profile of Asare's summer is here.
The other transfer of note is Caterina Piatti, who comes to Virginia from Florida after having played just one season under then-head-coach Kelly Rae Finley, who has since joined Rousell on staff at Virginia. She is a big center with international experience, and I would presume she will get the starting nod in Amanze's absence. She posted freshman-in-the-SEC kind of numbers in her first season in America, dealing with the language barrier and the culture shock of just being in America. Virginia can throw a lot of height onto the court. Amanze is 6' 4", Ring is 6' 5", Piatti is 6' 4", and Janae Walker, a forward from Rutgers, is 6' 4".
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Jeff White has been busy this fall. You can read his profile on Piatti here.
And to continue with the parallels to the men's team one last time, this is an international team. Ring is Australian, Piatti is Italian, Asare is Canadian, and then there are two freshman guards, Sintija Aukstikalnyte from Lithuania and Emilie Brzonova from Czechia. Both have international experience and we'll have to see how they slot into the team.
The Season
Aaron Roussell is new on the job and the out-of-conference slate looks like it was put together on the fly. This would have been a good slate for an Atlantic 10 team: Navy, VCU, ODU, JMU, William & Mary. Virginia does have Oklahoma and UAB in their pre-Thanksgiving tournament and Mississippi State away for the ACC v SEC Challenge.
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Just before Christmas, Virginia gets Kentucky as part of something called the Sprouts Farmers Market ESPNW Invitational. Despite the awful name, this game should be interesting. Kentucky is coached by former Virginia Tech coach Kenny Brooks, and the Wildcats start out the season as the number 14 team in the country.
As for the ACC slate, it is pretty anodyne in these days of coast-to-coast conferences. Cal and Stanford travel to Charlottesville, meaning that SMU is in Dallas. Virginia Tech is the protected rivalry game, so Virginia gets the Hokies twice. The first game is tonight, actually, as the Hoos host UMES at 6:00 pm at the JPJ.
The Outlook
We've got a new coach running out a starting lineup of largely someone else's players which is a rarity in these times we live in. We have, however, learned that Roussell can recruit players of his own as next year's class already has a trio of Top 75 players: Lisa Sirgi, Sabrina Anderson, and Neveah Roberson. All are high school seniors meaning they could be the core of the Roussell Era for years to come.
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Other than knowing that Kymora Johnson is going to be one of the two or three best players in the ACC, I am at the same point as I was for Ryan Odom and the men last year. I don't know what to expect. The Cavaliers were tabbed to finish sixth in the ACC in the pre-season poll. That would have been a bit of a reach were Virginia still under Coach Mox's trajectory, but now? A new face, a new dynamic, a new frontier, and anything is possible. We don't know if Roussell is going to be more successful than Coach Mox, but the year will certainly be more interesting.
My assessment of the men at the beginning of the 2026-2027 season is here.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com/college/virginia as Virginia Women's Basketball: The State of the Program .
