When Virginia women’s basketball coach Joanne Boyle arrived in Charlottesville in April 2011, she inherited leadership of a program guided for the previous 34 years by the beloved Debbie Ryan. Her predecessor had shepherded the Cavaliers to 736 wins, 24 NCAA Tournaments and 12 Sweet Sixteen appearances, expecting academic dedication from her players all the while.
Boyle, the 2006-2007 Pac-10 Coach of the Year at California, hoped to continue Ryan’s work. Entering her third year with the program, however, she has yet to steer Virginia to the NCAA Tournament. This season, at least at the outset, represents the Cavaliers’ best chance for such a berth in her short tenure. After a 2012-13 season derailed by injuries, the Cavaliers look physically sound and emotionally enthused as they prepare to visit James Madison Friday night.
“They’re not afraid to talk about it [making the Tournament],” Boyle said. “I think that’s their goal, and they can speak about it, because I feel like they believe that they should be there this year.”
The 2013-14 Cavaliers may be thin in the frontcourt, but with senior captains Ataira Franklin, Kelsey Wolfe and Lexie Gerson starting in the backcourt, they possess a key ingredient to postseason success: veteran guard play. The return of Gerson, a steals maestro who sat out all of last year rehabbing her surgically-repaired hip, gives the Cavaliers reason for positivity. The ball-hawking guard averaged 3.1 thefts per game in 2011-12, when she was named to the All-ACC Defensive Team, and kicked in 9.5 points per game on offense. This year in practice, Gerson has shown her signature knack for disruption within Virginia’s matchup zone, quieting fears she may not be the defender she was pre-injury.
“[I’ve] got to calm down,” Gerson said. “I’m going to be a little too excited. But I’m just thankful that I even have the opportunity to come back because a lot of people don’t get that.”
This year, the NCAA will introduce a 10-second backcourt violation alongside the long-used 30-second shot clock, and officials will emphasize the offensive player’s freedom of movement both on and off the ball. The backcourt limit incentivizes press defense, while Boyle believes the freedom of movement rules will encourage positional, feet-first guarding.
“I think where people will really be exposed is with hand-checking,” Boyle said. “I mean, they [the NCAA regulators] really want to protect the ball-handler. They want to see games that are higher-scoring … The whole idea is just to clean up the game and make our game more exciting and more fun.”
Boyle-coached teams always play lockdown defense — Virginia allowed 54.1 points per game in her first year compared with 64.5 in Ryan’s last — but with final scores likely on the rise and the ACC strengthened by the arrival of Pittsburgh, Syracuse and No. 6 Notre Dame, the Cavaliers will also need to score in bunches. To that end, Boyle has returned to a scheme from her Richmond days: the Princeton offense. The perimeter-oriented, single-post system should help Virginia compensate for its lack of size.
The Cavaliers’ success running the Princeton offense, however, may well turn on the play of their most prominent pivot: junior forward Sarah Imovbioh. The board-hoarding forward played her first season of collegiate basketball last year after the NCAA ruled her ineligible to compete as a freshman, and she impacted Virginia’s on-court identity from start to finish, scoring a season-high 21 points in the Cavaliers’ season-opening win against James Madison and posting an 18-point, 18-rebound double-double in a late-season loss to Wake Forest.
Boyle said Imovbioh “almost rebounds like she’s two people,” but the Cavaliers prefer to clean the glass as a group. Virginia out-rebounded its competition by a margin of 3.6 last season. This year, with only four players above six feet, the team is particularly conscious of the need to limit its opponents to one shot per possession.
“I think in the past two years, rebounding is definitely something that we’ve struggled with, but we’ve had [graduated forwards] Simone [Egwu] and Telia [McCall] down there,” Franklin said. “So, just as guards we’re definitely going to have to pick up some of that slack, and, you know, we can’t rely so heavily on Sarah to get all the boards.”
The sweet-shooting Franklin has steadily improved through the course of her Virginia career. She earned First Team All-ACC honors for the first time last season, when she paced Virginia in scoring (14.3), minutes (36.1) and steals (2.2) per game. Franklin was even better in ACC play, averaging 15.6 points (sixth in the conference) and shooting 81.8 percent from the charity stripe (fourth) while leading the league with 38.3 minutes per game. Her continued progression as both a player and a leader could help Virginia exceed expectations in a conference with four teams ranked in the preseason AP Poll’s top-25.
“I think that that’s why you play Division I basketball, to compete and to play against highly ranked teams,” Franklin said. “And, you know, there’s going to be games where we’re the underdogs, but, like I said, that’s what you play for.”
Wolfe will likely help Franklin shoulder the scoring load. She had a breakout season as a junior, averaging 10.6 points per game in 25 games after averaging 2.8 points per game in her first two years. Wolfe scored 20-plus points on three occasions before tearing her right ACL late in the first half against Maryland Feb. 17. She said she is healthy now but will need in-game repetitions to regain trust in her body.
The Cavaliers and Boyle hope to build and burnish their own Virginia legacies, and after two seasons together, they may finally be in position to do so.
“Just being around this coaching staff for three years you get to know them inside and out, and they know us,” Wolfe said. “So it’s just a comfort level that’s completely different from their first year here.”
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