Women’s Basketball: Virginia opens final homestand with loss to Miami

Courtesy UVA Media Relations

The Virginia women’s basketball team (3-21, 0-14 ACC) suffered a 71-55 loss against Miami (14-10, 7-7 ACC) on Tuesday at John Paul Jones Arena.

Miami jumped out to a 20-3 lead in the first quarter and used a 10-0 run at the start of the second half to build up a 20-point lead.

Junior guard Taylor Valladay scored 17 points with a career-high nine rebounds. Sophomore guard Mir McLean scored 12 points with nine rebounds.

Destiny Harden led the Hurricanes with 16 points, going 6-of-9 from the field. Kelsey Marshall scored 15 points with seven rebounds.

Miami opened the game on a 9-1 run with a putback from Mir McLean with 5:22 left in the quarter being UVA’s lone field goal of the period. The Hurricanes built up a 20-3 lead by the end of the period. Sophomore guard Aaliyah Pitts ended the UVA shooting drought, making a layup 1:17 into the second quarter, making the score 22-7. The Cavaliers mounted an 8-0 run, fueled by a pair of jumpers from Valladay, to cut the deficit to 10, 27-17, with 4:31 left in the period. The Hurricanes built back up a 14-point lead, but a layup from grad student center Eleah Parker right before the buzzer cut the deficit to 35-24 at halftime.

Miami opened the second half on a 10-0 run, with junior forward London Clarkson scoring UVA’s first points of the quarter at the free throw line with 4:50 remaining in the third. Virginia had missed nine straight field goal attempts before Clarkson made a layup with 4:20 remaining. Grad student guard Amandine Toi ended another four-minute field goal drought by hitting a three with 24 seconds left in the period. Valladay closed out the frame with a fastbreak jumper to make it 57-38 heading into the final period.

The Cavaliers and Hurricanes traded baskets, including Toi hitting her second trey of the game, and trips to the free throw line in the first five minutes of the fourth quarter. Virginia put together a 6-0 run, all coming at the free throw line, to cut the deficit to 65-51 with four minutes left in the game. Valladay scored a layup with 2:19 remaining to extend the Cavalier run to 8-0. Miami ended a four-and-a-half minute scoreless streak with a jumper with 1:51 remaining in the game.

FROM HEAD COACH TINA THOMPSON

“Really tough first quarter. It seems to be the story of the game as hard as we worked, as well as we played in the second, third, and fourth. That hole we dug for us in the first quarter was just insurmountable. It just wasn’t something we could dig our way out of and anytime you start the game down 17 the effort that you have to give in order to get back in the game is just too much and we just ran out of time.”