After earning an automatic bid to the women’s NIT, the Virginia women’s basketball team looks to re-find its “offensive rhythm” after suffering a 62-52 loss to Miami in the second round of the ACC Tournament on March 6.
Virginia (17-13, 7-9 ACC) came into the ACC Tournament with an upset over No. 8 Louisville in its regular season finale where they outshot the Cardinals 51.2% to 33.3% from the field. But against Miami, the Cavaliers only shot 26.5% from the field in the second half to allow Miami to pull away with the double-digit win after only holding a four-point lead at halftime.
“This last month, we’ve really had a flow to us,” coach Joanne Boyle said after the loss. “[In this game] we were so disjointed. We didn’t have a flow offensively. Where we’ve been really good is if we get stops and get in transition—we can kind of go back and forth between running and pushing the ball in transition, calling the quick hitters, and running a couple of sets. I felt like we got back to where we were a month ago, which was walk the ball down the floor, miss a shot, and just one pass.”
In that game, Virginia’s leading scorer, junior guard Faith Randolph — who has been given ACC All-Academic and All-ACC Second Team honors since then — only made one bucket on thirteen attempts.
“I didn’t feel like we had a rhythm at all in the game, and I think we were just constantly trying to figure it out,” Randolph said. “I felt like we’ve had ups and downs in the season, and we just really want to find that consistency.”
Sophomore guard Breyana Mason was also named to the ACC All-Academic team this postseason. She led the Cavaliers in scoring against Miami, recording 13 points on six of twelve shooting, one of the better shot percentages in the game.
This will be the first postseason tournament aside from the ACC Tournament for Randolph and Mason, as the Cavaliers last played in a postseason tournament in 2012 when they reached the quarterfinals of the WNIT.
It is the second WNIT appearance at Virginia for Boyle, who led that 2012 squad in her inaugural season at the school. Two years before taking over the Virginia head coaching position, Boyle led California to the WNIT title in 2010.
The Cavaliers have reached the quarterfinals in each WNIT tournament they have appeared in and will face another experienced team in the WNIT in the first round on Thursday night when they travel to Norfolk, Va. to play Old Dominion (20-12, 11-7 C-USA).
Both Virginia and ODU received automatic bids for finishing with the next-highest conference standing after all teams were accounted for in the NCAA women’s Tournament.
The Monarchs have made WNIT appearances in five of the last six years, advancing as far as the second round in two of those years. This season, redshirt sophomore forward Jennie Simms leads the Monarchs with 18.8 points and eight rebounds per game. She was named to the All Conference USA Team and was also named C-USA’s Newcomer of the Year. In the C-USA Tournament, Simms upped her scoring average to 23.6 points in three games to be named to the All-Tournament team, helping her team reach the semifinals where they lost to eventual champion Western Kentucky. In the game, the Monarchs were down 22 points before eventually coming back and losing by two, 61-59.
Tipoff is set for 7 p.m. at the Ted Constant Convocation Center at Old Dominion University on March 19.
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