While students and fans may have spent the past few weeks traveling and relaxing, Virginia’s No. 14 women’s basketball team has been hard at work. The Cavaliers are on a nine-game winning streak, including a 77-59 win at home Sunday against No. 25 Wake Forest.
In December and January, the Cavaliers (14-2, 1-0 ACC) have routinely stomped their opponents; only one of their nine games since the beginning of December has ended with a margin of victory smaller than 10 points.
Junior guard Monica Wright continues to lead the team on offense and defense, averaging 21.9 points and totaling 56 steals during the season so far. She also has rebounded well for a guard, grabbing 5.9 boards per game. A major portion of the Cavaliers’ excellent play recently, however, can be attributed to the return of senior forward Lyndra Littles. Having been unable to play in nine games during the fall semester for academic reasons, Littles has made an immediate impact since she resumed play with the Cavaliers in the Dec. 18 game against Monmouth. In her first game back, she put up 17 points and five rebounds. Littles is averaging 19 points and 6.9 rebounds since her debut this season.
“Having Lyndra back was a plus and to see her perform that well was great,” coach Debbie Ryan said after the Monmouth game. “I wasn’t surprised by how well she played because she’s been playing like this all preseason.”
Littles was named the ACC Player of the Week for the week ending Jan. 4, during which she averaged 25.7 points.
Despite Wright and Littles leading the team in scoring, Ryan is allowing younger players to develop. So far, nine players have started at least one game and seven players have averaged at least 5 points per game. Three of the players who fall into these categories are freshmen: forward Chelsea Shine and guards Ariana Moorer and Whitny Edwards.
While the freshmen have been solid and have shown steady signs of growth, the upperclassmen continue to stand out. Besides Wright and Littles, senior center Aisha Mohammed has continued to dominate and has nearly averaged a double-double, putting up 12.8 points and 9.3 rebounds per game.
Solid play from each of the regular major contributors brought the Cavaliers to a victory Sunday against the Demon Deacons despite a slow start for Virginia. Wake Forest, at one point during the first half, led by 16 points before everything finally clicked for the Cavaliers. After halftime, Virginia went on a 24-0 run.
Wright credits an energetic home crowd of 3,737, a season high in attendance at John Paul Jones Arena for women’s basketball, for the turnaround.
“The crowd was most into it [Sunday],” Wright said. “Getting stop after stop and getting those steals our defensive energy was amazing. [The fans] might not know it, but that really fuels us and gives us energy.”
Wright, Littles and Mohammed led the Cavaliers with double-digit scoring performances, putting up 20, 19 and 15 points, respectively. The players’ leap into play from the first half to the second was quite notable as the team nearly doubled their shooting percentage from 29.7 percent in the first half to 50.0 percent in the second.
The team will look to build off of its improved play in the second half in the upcoming weeks as it continues to face teams in the very talented ACC that has had six teams ranked in the top 25 at some point this season. Next up is one of the biggest games of the season for the Cavaliers: a trip to Chapel Hill, N.C. to face undefeated No. 2 North Carolina Jan. 16. Things don’t slow down much from there. Virginia will then take on the Hokies in Blacksburg, Va. Jan. 21 and a young but dangerous Florida State team Jan. 23 at JPJ.
With Winter Break such a success for the Cavaliers and with the momentum of a winning streak going into the heart of its conference schedule, Virginia will look to make a splash in a conference that sent five teams to the NCAA Tournament last year. These next few weeks will be key for the Cavaliers as they look to prove that their success is no fluke and that they can keep up inspired play even with school back in session.
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