A UMBC team that lost at #10 Maryland by 33 last week and was picked in the preseason to finish eighth in the nine-team America East just beat Virginia in JPJ.
Which brings me to how, a few weeks ago, I wrote, in a story on the embarrassingly soft nonconference schedule that fourth-year coach Amaka Agugua-Hamilton put together for the 2025-2026 season, that she couldn’t afford a hiccup against one of the cupcakes – which, no offense to UMBC, NET ranking: 296, but they’re a cupcake.
ICYMI
The 61-56 loss to UMBC last night wasn’t a hiccup; it was projectile vomiting.
“We didn’t compete today, which was very disappointing, because that’s one thing that, you know, I’m very confident that this group does,” said Agugua-Hamilton, whose team never had a lead, after falling behind 11-2 in the game’s opening four minutes, and trailing by as many as 14, midway through the second quarter.
The ‘Hoos (2-1) did get the game back to square in the fourth quarter, on a fastbreak layup by guard Romi Levy with 3:13 to go that tied the score at 54-54.
Virginia would miss its final six shots from the floor thereafter, five of the misses by preseason All-ACC first-teamer Kymora Johnson, who finished with four points on 1-of-16 shooting, against a UMBC defense that focused on getting the ball out of her hands with double-teams.
Johnson obviously tried to force things in the second half – she was 1-of-11 from the floor in the final 20 minutes, 1-of-7 in the fourth quarter.
UVA missed all 14 of its three-point attempts, and missed 14 layups – and was 18-of-27 at the free-throw line.
“We were getting the shots we wanted. We were executing to get the shots we wanted. We just didn’t finish, you know, and that was the difference. And also free throws, missed nine free throws, and lose by five,” Agugua-Hamilton lamented in her postgame.
You could fault the cupcake schedule for not preparing Virginia for getting “punched in the mouth,” which Agugua-Hamilton conceded after the game her team needed, after winning their first two games by an average of 47.5 points.
But again, UMBC, no offense to them, another cupcake.
“I didn’t think that we responded,” Agugua-Hamilton said of the early punch in the mouth from UMBC (2-1). “They came, they punched early, they led the whole entire game on our home court, which is unacceptable. We’re going to learn a lot from this, and I know we’re not going to look like that.”
That was the theme of her brief remarks after the game.
“It will be a turning point, because I just know the people in that locker room, players and coaches, and I know everybody’s hurt by that, I know everybody’s shocked that we looked that bad, and we couldn’t kind of get out of it,” Agugua-Hamilton said. “I’m confident in this group. I still stand by my team, and I know the talent that we have. Unfortunately, we had to, you know, suffer a loss like this three games into the season, when we know that we should have beat this team. But, you know, now it’s just about getting better, getting back to what we were doing, and making sure we never look like that again.”
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Chris Graham
