Women’s Basketball: Virginia falls 61-53 to Wake Forest in ACC Tournament

Courtesy UVA Media Relations

The Virginia women’s basketball team (5-22, 2-16 ACC) had its season end with a 61-53 loss against Wake Forest (14-15, 4-14 ACC) in the first round of the 2022 ACC Women’s Basketball Tournament on Wednesday at the Greensboro Coliseum in Greensboro, N.C.

The Cavaliers led by eight points in the third quarter, but the Demon Deacons closed the game on a 14-2 run in the final 5:32 to advance to the tournament’s second round.

Sophomore guard Mir McLean scored 11 points with nine rebounds. Junior forward London Clarkson scored 11 points.

Jewel Spear led Wake Forest with 23 points. Christina Morra had a double-double with 13 points and 10 rebounds.

Despite a cold-shooting first quarter, going just 3-of-20 from the field, Virginia’s defensive efforts made it a one-point deficit, 12-11, heading into the second quarter. A jumper from grad student guard Amandine Toi 13 seconds into the second put the Cavaliers ahead. A 5-0 run, capped by a layup from sophomore guard Mir McLean, gave UVA an 18-14 lead. After Wake Forest tied the game, a three-pointer from grad student guard McKenna Dale followed by a steal and a layup from junior guard Taylor Valladay made it a 23-18 Virginia advantage with 5:30 remaining. A three-pointer from Toi with just over a minute left reestablished a five-point Virginia lead. The Cavaliers went into the break leading 29-24.

Clarkson scored the first bucket of the second half, but Wake Forest mounted a rally, with a three-pointer pulling the Demon Deacons to within two, 33-31. Toi answered with a fastbreak layup, the start of a 6-0 Cavalier run that put UVA ahead 39-31 with 4:53 remaining in the quarter. A three-pointer from Spear capped a 7-0 Wake run that made it a one-point game, 39-38. The Cavaliers answered with back-to-back layups from Clarkson and sophomore guard Aaliyah Pitts to preserve the lead. UVA went into the fourth quarter leading 45-42.

The Cavaliers built back up a seven-point lead on a Pitts layup with 8:41 remaining, but another Spear three-pointer followed by a jumper from Olivia Summiel cut the UVA lead to 49-47 with seven minutes left in the game. Wake Forest took its first lead since early in the second quarter on a steal and fastbreak layup from Elise Williams with 4:55 remaining. UVA retook the lead on a jumper from Valladay with 3:47 remaining, but a jumper followed by an and-one from Morra gave Wake a 59-53 lead with 1:44 remaining. The Cavaliers missed their final three field goal attempts

FROM HEAD COACH TINA THOMPSON

“Really tough one for us. We felt like we controlled the game for most of the game. We had a really tough fourth quarter where we were having problems executing as well as missing a few assignments defensively. I’m proud of my team. It’s really, really tough to kind of have the bumps that we’ve had during the season but continue to show up and continue to fight. We just wish that this one would have ended a little differently. I kind of feel like we ran out of time.”

“We’ve been working kind of fighting all year to just find chemistry as well as be consistent in our schemes, and like I said, our kids have continued to show up every day and work and try to apply the things that we’ve been giving them. At the end of the season, it was starting to come together for us, and we were gaining confidence, you know, in the things that we were doing, our schemes and execution offensively, and just kind of fell a little short. Of course in hindsight, we could say that we wished that we would have kind of turned that corner a little earlier and maybe our season would be a little different, but we had opportunities to do so. But I’m glad that it came together when it did, but it allows us to see what is possible moving forward.”