For many Virginia students, Winter Break is a time for rest and relaxation to recover from a difficult semester. Not so for the Virginia women’s basketball team.
The team will play seven games during break, excluding yesterday’s game against Illinois and tomorrow’s game against East Carolina; however, the Cavaliers are staying focused on the tasks at hand and approaching one game at a time.
“We’re not going to talk about any [one] game right now,” senior center Aisha Mohammed said. “So when the time comes to play those games, we’ll talk about it and we’ll work on it.”
Virginia will kick off Winter Break at home against Monmouth and Mount St. Mary’s, two smaller schools that are not to be taken lightly. Monmouth sits at 4-2 and is led by senior forward Jennifer Bender, who boasts a scoring average of 19.4 points per game and also leads her team with 9.2 rebounds per game. Mount St. Mary’s is 3-2 on the year, having most recently suffered a heartbreaking 55-54 loss to Loyola (Md.).
Virginia continues its home stand with the Marriott Cavalier Classic, where it will face Rider and the winner of the Louisiana Tech/University Maryland-Baltimore County game.
Virginia will then face Georgia (7-1) on the second day of the new year in what figures to be the most competitive game of break. Georgia has proven to be a streaky team thus far after opening at No. 25 in the rankings. Georgia blasted teams such as Alabama State and N.C. Central by large margins, but the team barely scraped by in a 64-61 victory against Oakland and suffered a stunning upset at the hands of little-known Detroit Mercy, 70-66. The Bulldogs have since regained their dominant form but will be tested as they enter a far more difficult stretch of their schedule.
The Cavaliers will wrap up Winter Break with a game against St. Francis (1-5) before kicking off ACC play against Wake Forest (6-0) Jan. 11. Though the Demon Deacons have not been seriously challenged in their first six games of the year, Wake has proven capable of spreading the ball around, because three of its players have scoring averages in double figures.
For their part, the Cavaliers are practicing how better to spread the scoring load and ease the burden on junior guard Monica Wright, who is leading the team in scoring with 21.4 points per game.
“I think it’s just something that happens,” freshman forward Chelsea Shine said. “Obviously, we all know we can’t be putting that burden on her. She’s the leader and she likes that role and takes that role so she does sort of step up, and we know that we can expect that from her. But at the same time, we know that we can’t just sit back and let Monica do everything, because it’s obviously not fair and that’s not how a team works.”
Other than Wright and senior center Aisha Mohammed, who is averaging a double-double with 13 points and 10.7 rebounds per game, Virginia will look to talented freshman forward Chelsea Shine and freshman guard Whitny Edwards for points. Each averages more than 9 points and four rebounds per game.
Luckily for the Cavaliers, they will not have to travel during break, as every game is being held in the friendly confines of John Paul Jones Arena. Virginia will need all the momentum it can muster from its holiday home stand, though, because it will face a stiff test in its first game back from Winter Break. Jan. 16 will find Virginia at ACC power and current No. 2 team in the country, North Carolina, in what should be a telling contest for the rest of Virginia’s season.
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