The Virginia women’s basketball team (16-9, 5-7 ACC) defeated Wake Forest (14-10, 5-7 ACC) in an overtime thriller Sunday, riding freshman guard Dominique Toussaint’s 12 points in the extra frame to a 60-57 win.
It wasn’t a pretty game from any angle, with the Cavaliers allowing the Demon Deacons to claw back in the second half after dominating on defense in the first, but Virginia grinded out the victory in a must-win game.
“I’m obviously happy to just come out with a win,” head coach Joanne Boyle said. “It seems like every time we play Wake Forest it’s a battle like this. We’ve been fortunate to come out on this side of it a couple of times. I thought it was a great game by both teams and just a lot of grit. I’m excited and fortunate to come out on the other end of it.”
Virginia absolutely dominated Wake Forest in the first half, holding the Deacons to only 13 points on 25 percent shooting. Virginia struggled to find its scoring stroke as well, hitting only 28.6 percent of its shots, but made four of six threes to widen the gap. All four threes came at the hands of sophomore guard J’Kyra Brown, who shined with 16 points in the first half.
“My teammates found me open. I just had the confidence to knock [the shots] down,” Brown said of her strong first half. “I don’t know what the score was. I didn’t really care about that going in. I was just worried about making sure I contributed to the team by making stops and getting back on the offensive end.”
Boyle had high praise for Brown, who has been playing exceptionally well as the Cavaliers’ sixth man down the stretch.
“You always want the sixth man to be a spark, that’s the biggest thing. It’s got to be somebody that can come in and be a spark, and that can be in a lot of different ways. It can be a defensive spark, with rebounding, and it just so happens with [Brown], offensively, she can score the ball,” Boyle said.
The team’s timely scoring did not carry over to the third quarter as Wake Forest came out of the locker room hot, outscoring the Cavaliers 18-7 to pull within two points before the final frame. A back-and-forth final quarter left the game tied at 46. The Demon Deacons had the chance to pull ahead at the end of regulation, but missed two shots on its final possession and sent the game to overtime.
Toussaint took control of overtime from the get-go, scoring the Cavaliers’ first seven points as they began to pull away. Wake Forest fought back and tied the game at 53 with about a minute remaining, but a jumper by senior guard Breyana Mason followed by five straight points from Toussaint put the game away. Toussaint overcame nerves to put on a stellar performance and propel the team to victory.
“I was just a little nervous whether or not [the ball] would go in. I just relied on our practices and the hours I spend in the gym,” Toussaint said of her thoughts before overtime.
Toussaint and Brown led the scoring for the Cavaliers with 19 and 17 points apiece. When Brown lost steam in the second half, the rest of the Virginia team stepped up to keep the game close as Wake Forest began to heat up.
“It just felt like we were able to go to multiple different people’s numbers tonight and we got different scoring. It was good because you want to keep them guessing a little bit about what we’re going to do. Everybody played their role. It’s one of those games where you’re asking everybody to contribute and everybody was finding their way to do it,” Boyle said.
Virginia had to win to keep its tournament hopes alive because its resume is so similar to that of Wake Forest’s. With three of Virginia’s final four games of the season against ranked opponents, a win here was very important.
The Cavaliers will have their toughest test of the season against a dangerous Florida State team, the current leader of the ACC and No. 5 in the country. Virginia will take the Seminoles (23-2, 11-1 ACC) at home Thursday night in its second-to-last home game of the season.
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