We’ll put this as gently as we can.
Things don’t seem to be working out for Virginia women’s basketball. Before we elaborate, let’s be clear on this. The Cavaliers have no quit in them despite the 5-22 season that ended with a loss to Wake Forest in the first round of the ACC Women’s Basketball Tournament on Wednesday. In fact, when records are this lopsided, it’s easy to think the coach has lost the team, and we don’t think that to be the case here.
Coach Tina Thompson is 30-63 in four seasons in Charlottesville. Prior to this season, the Cavaliers were 0-5 (a COVID-shortened schedule) in 2020-21, 13-17 in 2019-20 and 12-19 in 2018-19 — her inaugural season after inheriting an NCAA Tournament team that advanced to the second round before losing to South Carolina.
We continue to be puzzled by Thompson’s persona through all of this. Her Twitter account, @iamTinaThompson, rarely reflects anything going on with Virginia women’s basketball. We don’t see her wearing Virginia colors on the sidelines. We certainly aren’t saying Thompson doesn’t care about her own program. From a distance, it’s hard to see. At the very least, this program feels disconnected from its fan base.
What should be one of the premier programs in the sport has rapidly declined. This season included two ACC forfeits, one somewhat inexplicable and another one just plain inexplicable. Mechanical and aircraft crew staffing issues were cited as the reason for Virginia’s Feb. 10 forfeit against Louisville, scheduled as a breast cancer fundraiser event at the Yum! Center. The standard is for teams to travel the day before the game. Flight delays/cancellations happen in sports just as they do in life, but it’s highly unusual for teams to forfeit. Was a bus ride an option? It’s fewer than 500 miles from Charlottesville to Louisville – certainly not ideal but doable.
The second Cavaliers forfeited a home game against Notre Dame scheduled for Feb. 22, a makeup of Jan. 25’s postponed game. Forgive us for being glib, but who forfeits a home game? We learned of the news on the Notre Dame website and the ACC issued a statement. Virginia had a sentence in its game notes and season ticket holders received an email saying they would receive a refund. Virginia’s lack of transparency about something so unprecedented is a sucker punch to its fans. The forfeit didn’t just affect Virginia — it had implications in the ACC race with North Carolina, Notre Dame and Virginia Tech battling each other to be among the top four seeds in the ACC Tournament along with NC State at 1 and Louisville at 2.
Recruiting is not where it should be. It’s tough to contend in this league without elite talent. Virginia hasn’t signed any of the top prospects the last four years. Guard Shemera Williams has been the only player from ESPN’s Top 100 to sign. She left after three semesters.
The Virginia women’s basketball coaching job should be among the most coveted in the country. This is the program that Debbie Ryan built, the alma mater of Dawn Staley, who transformed South Carolina into an empire. We know many Virginia fans can’t help but look at Gamecock women’s basketball under Staley — a NCAA title in 2017, three Final Fours in the last six years, nine 25-win seasons and averaging more than 10,000 fans for the last eight seasons — and think, “That should be us.” It’s not, of course, a history that dates back to the uncomfortable way Ryan departed in 2011 after a 34-year storied history that included 736 victories and 24 NCAA Tournament appearances with Staley taking them to three Final Fours.
In between Ryan and Thompson, Virginia hired Joanne Boyle, who ultimately retired to focus more time on complications that arose during the adoption of her daughter from Senegal. Boyle left this program in a good place, but Virginia has gone four seasons without a winning record.
When Virginia athletic director Carla Williams selected Thompson, as the program’s fifth head coach, it was a glamour hire. Nobody denies that Thompson is a legend; the former USC star was the top pick in the WNBA draft and is a women’s basketball Hall-of-Famer. But she had no head coaching experience; she previously was an associate head coach at Texas. In fact, Thompson didn’t initially even want to coach; she had to be talked into the Longhorns job by Karen Aston and the job was shaped for her.
That makes the decision to come to Virginia a curious one. The fit seemed off quite from the tip. No one doubts Thompson’s wisdom and love for the game. But being a head coach means bus rides and weekends in uncomfortable bleachers and sweaty gyms. It means engaging with your fan base, nurturing folks that you ask to support you.
It means accountability.
Thompson has a year remaining on her contract. After the past four, we’d be surprised if she doesn’t resign after what we said from the beginning, doesn’t appear to be working out. We still think this program is a gold mine to inherit, and we’re going to be bold here and say Williams should consider Tammi Reiss for its next coach. As much as we love Reiss’ tie as an alumna to the program, what we really love is the way she has gone about doing business at Rhode Island.
It’s Reiss’ third season as coach and Rhode Island is 22-5, seeded second in the Atlantic 10 Tournament. That’s the most wins ever for this program, which struggled for relevancy for the last two decades and had been little more than an afterthought in the A-10. Reiss navigated the transfer portal well to turn around the program quickly. She’s also got an infectious personality that resonates with fans and the players she recruits.
She’s exactly what Virginia needs at this time in the world.
What a win it would be for Virginia if the Cavaliers could secure Reiss as their next coach.
And as Cavaliers fans know, Virginia hasn’t won a lot lately.