Bringing you the latest from Charlottesville as to who’s come and who’s gone from the Cavaliers, and guess what? The list doesn’t take up much room.
This is the second in a series of Comings and Goings that started with a look at JMU.
As for Virginia . . .
Goings
Breyana Mason: The 5-8 senior guard, who scored 1,080 points as a Cav and averaged 10.3 ppg last season, has graduated.
Comings
Amandine Toi: The 5-11 freshman shooting guard is on the U19 junior national team and has been in the pipeline for Team France since 2014.
Brianna Tinsley: Decorated 5-7 freshman guard from St. Anne’s-Belfield is also a state champion in the 200. Averaged 15.2 points, 3.9 assists, 3.9 steals and 3.4 rebounds per game in her four-year high school career, averaging 17.8 points her senior season
Khyasia Caldwell: The 5-5 guard is a walk-on from the track team
One reason Wahoo fans are crowing heading into the 2017-18 season is the hopes that this Virginia team will return to the NCAA Tournament, a feat the Cavaliers haven’t achieved in the last seven years. Finishing 20-13 last season, Virginia finished with an RPI of 53 and competed in the WNIT for the third straight season (Virginia lost at James Madison, 61-56, in the second round). The Cavs were identified by the NCAA selection committee as one of the four teams left out of the field of 64.
The regular season included 11-point losses to NC State and Miami, an overtime loss to Louisville and an eight-point loss at Notre Dame.
Aliyah Huland El
While most coaches bemoan with regularity that their teams are young, Joanne Boyle wasn’t embellishing a year ago after bringing in the 13th-ranked recruiting class. The good news is last year’s freshmen, Felicia Aiyeotan, Lisa Jablonowski, Jocelyn Willoughby and Dominique Toussaint, return as seasoned sophomores alongside seniors J’Kyra Brown, Lauren Moses and Aliyah Huland El. Leading rebounder Willoughby averaged 9.8 ppg, Toussaint 9.5 ppg, Brown 8.6 ppg and Huland El, 7.4 ppg.
Toussaint and Willoughby were on the All-ACC freshman team; Willoughby was the first freshman guard to lead Virginia in rebounding since Chrissy Reese in 1980.
Minus the graduated Mason, everyone returns and they’ve already played a handful of games together thanks to a summer foreign tour to Costa Rica.
“When you go from your freshman year to your sophomore year, that’s where you see huge growth,” Boyle said. Toussaint, she said, is capable of adding the extra responsibility that will likely come with sharing point guard duties with Brown. Stopper Jablonowski, who started Virginia’s final eight games, will look to contribute more offensively.
Aiyeotan, 6-9, has an exciting upside and spent her offseason putting on 15 pounds of muscle weight and focusing on her footwork with the help of assistant La’Keshia Frett Meredith. Coming off the bench for an average of 12.5 minutes, the Nigerian led the Cavs in blocked shots last season with 54.
“Being able to finish this year is huge for her,” Boyle said. “We need that from her.”
Mason led the team in 3-pointers; Toussaint, Brown and Huland El are all capable beyond the arc.
Another bright spot: 6-3 Mone´ Jones is finally healthy and expected to play a role. The junior missed eight games with a leg injury last year.
If the pieces come together, the Cavaliers won’t be sweating out the selection show this spring. Boyle said this team is hungry for making a statement in the postseason and embraces the kind of work that needs to be put in both in the ACC and in nonconference to do so. The Cavs open at Mississippi State; least anybody forget, that’s versus a Bulldog team that denied UConn a fifth straight NCAA title before bowing to South Carolina in the national championship.
“This group is very competitive and understands it’s right there for the taking,” Boyle said.
The Cavs will push tempo this year — they’re simply better when they run and they’ve got plenty of speed, notably Toussant and Toi — and Boyle will stress finishing at the rim.
“We have great chemistry,” she said. “Last year we played eight, maybe nine people and we can do that again. Being able to change defenses and throw different things out there and press more, we can take it up a notch this year. We’re a little bit older and we’re ready for this.”
We’re ready, too. We haven’t taken a stab at state rankings just yet, but we already predict Virginia as our preseason favorite to be the top team in the commonwealth.
Photos courtesy of Virginia Athletics