Sunday afternoon, the Virginia women’s basketball team came up short against Pittsburgh after mounting an admirable comeback. The Cavaliers (13-8, 3-4 ACC) trailed 52-40 with only 3:46 remaining in the fourth quarter, once Panther freshman forward Brenna Wise had converted her second attempt at the line.
Virginia’s savvy sophomore point guard Mikayla Venson — who leads the team in scoring with a 15.1 points per game average — responded right away, drilling a trifecta to cut the gap to single digits. From then on, Venson and junior guard Breyana Mason recorded 11 of the Cavalier’s final 12 points. They combined for 28 of the team’s 55 total points.
Scoring duos cannot carry the team night in and night out. Coach Joanne Boyle believes Virginia’s role players can take more advantage of matchups on the offensive end.
“I think we’ve had two people consistently score for us,” Boyle said. “So they’re putting their best defenders on Breyana [Mason] and Mikayla [Venson]. Mikayla hit a lot of big shots for us, but we have to have more people step up and score for us. …Everybody can score on this team — we just have to be more confident.”
Hungry for its first conference win, Pittsburgh (9-11, 1-6 ACC) raced out to a 19-6 lead in the first quarter and hushed the few Cavalier fans who had shoveled, slipped and swerved their way to John Paul Jones Arena through slush and snow.
A sluggish Virginia team on the court and sideline paid the price.
“We had to find our own energy,” sophomore forward Lauren Moses said. “The gym wasn’t packed, but that’s no excuse. We have to have the bench involved. We need to be communicating on offense and on defense. Like Coach Boyle said, ‘We didn’t come out the way we needed to win this game.’”
Slow to help and recover on the perimeter and inside the paint, the Cavaliers allowed Panther junior guard Fred Potvin to tally 15 points in the first half. The former star at Vanier College in Quebec, Canada stretched the floor, draining five of eight attempts from downtown. Potvin finished with a career-high 19 points to lead all scorers.
“I think this is the first time they changed their starting lineup, and I think they kind of looked at some of the things we were doing defensively and put [Potvin] in there as a shooter to spread the floor a little bit,” Boyle said. “I just thought they got some good looks early.”
Offensively, Virginia played at a slower pace than what Boyle and her coaching staff have come to expect. This year’s Cavalier unit has sought to get out in transition and run through its half-court offense before the defense can react. That was not the case Sunday, as lax drives, screens and passes were acceptable for Virginia players.
Though their offense was stagnant — producing a mere 18 points in the first half — and their defense was spotty, the Cavaliers possessed the basketball down three with six seconds left on the clock. Envisioning a game-tying buzzer beater from beyond the arc, Boyle subbed back in sophomore guard Aliyah Huland El, who was 2-3 from long range on the day.
“We were just trying to get a quick three-point shot,” Mason said. “We had a play that was right before it, but it kind of got jumbled at the end. But we were just trying to get down the court and hopefully get an open look, anything at that point."
Virginia fell 58-55 without creating a good look at a last-second shot, a sorry ending to a disappointing afternoon. Boyle chalked the defeat up to her team’s lack of urgency rather than an underestimation of Pittsburgh’s ability. Virginia will have to play with more energy Wednesday night if it hopes to pick up a win over North Carolina State (14-6, 5-2 ACC).
“I’ve looked at them,” Boyle said. “I’ll look at them more tonight, but they’re a complete team. We’ve always had really tough games against them. It always comes down to the wire.”
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