Five and a half minutes remained in the first half when freshman forward Amanda Fioravanti checked into the Virginia women’s basketball team’s home opener against High Point on Monday night. The Cavaliers held a four-point lead over the Panthers, and their shooting was inconsistent again, but with Fioravanti on the floor, every Virginia player had entered the game in its first 15 minutes.
The Cavaliers (1-1) pulled away from High Point (1-1) on the strength of a 16-3 run in the last five minutes of the opening half — capped by sophomore guard Faith Randolph’s free throws after she was fouled .4 seconds before the horn — and 10 of Virginia’s 12 players made it into the scoring column in the team’s 73-54 win. Randolph and junior forward Sarah Imovbioh led the Virginia charge, but on a night when All-ACC senior guard Ataira Franklin came off the bench for the first time since her freshman year, depth tilted the game in the Cavaliers’ favor.
“Eventually, you’ve got to find what rotations are working and kind of put into a five, six through nine [player rotation], but…it’s nice to be able to look at different combinations early in the season,” coach Joanne Boyle said.
Randolph finished with a game-high 19 points on 4-for-12 shooting, and Imovbioh scored 14 points despite hitting just three of nine close-in looks at the hoop. Among the Cavaliers with five or more field goal attempts, only Fioravanti shot better than 50 percent from the field. Virginia shot 35.7 percent as a team and only knocked down a pair of threes the whole game.
“Now we’ve got to kind of break practice down and really start getting some shots up every day in practice,” Boyle said.
The Cavaliers made up for their inaccurate display by attacking the rim and crashing the boards. Randolph nailed 10 of 11 from the free-throw line, and Imovbioh drained 8 of 9 at the charity stripe. Virginia hauled in 57 rebounds to High Point’s 30 after losing the battle on the boards — 49 to 26 — in its season-opening loss to James Madison on Friday. Imovbioh, who pulled down 15 rebounds by herself — including nine on the offensive glass — gave the Cavaliers second and third chances in their new Princeton offense by repeatedly out-jumping and out-muscling the undersized Panthers.
“We went into practice [after the loss to JMU], and Coach was on us because we got outhustled in that game,” Imovbioh said. “And she was like, ‘We need to get every rebound…I don’t care how you do it.’…So I think everyone was on the same page with me. Everyone was boxing out, and I was just going for the ball, just to help my team.”
Franklin played 20 minutes after averaging a team-high 36.6 last year, but she figured prominently in Virginia’s defensive effort, playing at the head of the Cavaliers 3-2 full court press and forcing the High Point ball-handlers to scramble as they tried to advance the ball. Franklin helped force one backcourt violation, and while she was on the floor, she formed one-half of the Cavaliers’ traps on the sidelines.
“She’s a worn soldier right about now, you know, four years in, and, I mean, that’s the whole reason we’re kind of tweaking the lineup a little bit,” Boyle said. “It’s nothing she’s doing. It’s just, her knees are really bad after four years, and so we’re just trying to limit her minutes and get as much mileage as we can through the ACCs.”
Randolph, for the second straight game, looked ready to take on part of the scoring burden held by Franklin and senior guard Kelsey Wolfe last year. She attacked the basket off backdoor cuts and in the open floor, taking one outlet pass from Franklin and dribbling hard to the rim, where she drew a foul and methodically sunk two freebies. Randolph scored in high-percentage situations throughout the game, and her corner three with 4:20 seconds left in the game extended Virginia’s lead from 10 to 13.
“Frankie has told me that our team is really going to need me, not just offensively but defensively, and just bringing up some of the energy,” Randolph said. “I’m just trying to find my role more this year.”
Senior guard Tayler Tremblay paced High Point with 17 points, and her midrange jumpers helped the Panthers stay within striking distance for most of the evening. Virginia, however, was the stronger team in the end, and the whole team contributed to the heavy-lifting.
“It all brings us together more when we’re all working together,” Randolph said.
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