Yesterday was Valentine's Day, and the Virginia women's bas-ketball team definitely has been playing with a lot of heart lately. But despite the holiday, they were sluggish during most of last night's road game against Wake Forest.
Virginia looked tired after an emotional victory over Georgia Tech Monday at home.
"When we came into this game, I knew it was a very dangerous game because we're a type of team that is so young that we didn't have a lot of emotion yesterday or today," Virginia coach Debbie Ryan said. "At halftime I knew that we weren't going to have a chance if we didn't pick up the intensity."
Virginia played solid defense throughout the first half, but the Cavs did not shoot so well. Ryan said it best - a tired team needs to get more intense by whatever means necessary.
Sometimes the aggressiveness of only one player can restore the life of an entire team. Luckily for the Cavaliers, senior guard Karen Jaeger proved their best-kept secret.
Having played only 51 minutes of the season prior to last night, Jaeger had been coming off the bench with quiet veteran leadership all season. She ran with the regulars for more than half the evening, catching Ryan's attention with two steals early in the second half.
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The 5-foot-9 guard only scored two points but grabbed five rebounds. That's five more than freshman phenom Brandi Teamer had in the entire first half, when the Cavs were outscored 30-23. Jaeger even growled while boxing out for a defensive board midway through the second half. That was monstrous. The lion was out of its cage.
I don't know if Teamer, one of the most dominant centers in the ACC, heard that ruckus, but she was quick to follow Jaeger's example to play aggressive in the low post. Teamer admitted she was inspired by the hard-nosed efforts of Jaeger and sophomore guard Safiya Grant, a role player-turned-starter who hit all four of her shots last night and kept the Wake Forest backcourt in check.
"Karen came off the bench today and did a great job defensively as well as offensively," Teamer said. "Safiya came in and gave us a lot of energy."
Sure, this was a slow-moving night for the Cavaliers, even during the second half comeback. The Virginia team that gloriously defeated the third-place Yellow Jackets Monday was not fully on the court until overtime.
That's when it counts, of course, and no matter how many times you have defeated an opponent, it's still a challenge to win on the road in extra minutes, even if the arena sits more than 80 percent empty.
As demonstrated throughout the latter half of the season, the young Cavaliers have proven they can finish strongly against quality teams. Now they need to take that same energy and use it at the start of the next game. At any rate, you can expect to witness more Jaegeresque performances as Virginia continues to learn from experience.
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