Thanks to a strong defensive effort and a second-half offensive explosion, the Virginia women's basketball team broke a five-game losing streak by defeating the Miami Hurricanes 73-60 Sunday afternoon at the John Paul Jones Arena.
"Thank God," Virginia coach Debbie Ryan said. "It's a hard streak to go through, let me tell you."
The signs of a turnaround for the team came Friday night when Virginia took on the No. 1 undefeated Duke Blue Devils. The Cavaliers played a gritty and determined game and although trailing most of the contest cut the deficit to only seven points with four minutes remaining in the game.
The fans rose to their feet, hoping the women could accomplish the same feat the men's basketball team had achieved just 24 hours earlier.
"I was here [Thursday] night, so I was thinking about that all day," Ryan said. "I felt very good coming into the game. I felt like our team prepared extremely well for Duke. I know that we had a great push; we got a couple good shots that we missed in that stretch."
The players echoed that optimism after the game. Junior guard Sharnee Zoll, who was devastated after the loss to Virginia Tech, was humming after a close defeat to Duke.
"We just played the No. 1 team in the country," Zoll said. "You're never satisfied with a loss, but my team showed a lot of character tonight in how we played. You wouldn't have thought that we were on a four-game losing streak. We came out, and we played our game plan. I'm proud of everyone. We fought to the end, and nobody can say it was a lack of effort."
That certainly rang true for sophomore forward Lyndra Littles. Littles scored a career-high 28 points against one of the best defensive teams in the country, lighting a fire under her teammates and the crowd.
"I'm capable of having games like that," Littles said. "I'm really happy with everybody's effort. The feeling that we had, even though we came out and lost, the feeling was phenomenal. I just wanted to stay in that moment. My performance, my teammates' performance, everything was great."
The same could not be said for the first half against the Hurricanes as Virginia lacked any real focus or drive.
"I thought we were going to handle the turnaround better than we did," Ryan said. "That disappointed me a little bit; there wasn't a lot of energy to start the game."
It also did not help when Littles got in early foul trouble, forcing Virginia to play without their leading scorer.
However, other Cavaliers stepped up the scoring slack. Senior captains Siedah Williams and Brenna McGuire had some of their better offensive performances in quite some time, scoring 12 and nine respectively.
The real stars however were Zoll and freshman guard Monica Wright. Wright continued to show why she was the preseason ACC Rookie of the Year candidate with 20 points and nine rebounds.
"[Wright] has been like that all year," She comes out she's ready to play every game. It's just like she is someone going to work with her lunch pail. I never have to worry.
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