Amaka Agugua-Hamilton is out, after leading the UVA Basketball team to a surprise Sweet 16 appearance, which, in the end, couldn’t mask the toxicity in the day-to-day operations of the program that has now bubbled to the surface.
We’d been hearing in February that Agugua-Hamilton was on thin ice with Carla Williams, and that it was likely that the coach wouldn’t be retained if the team didn’t get an invite to the NCAA Tournament.
I read that at the time as meaning, if the team got a bid, Agugua-Hamilton would skate through to the final year of the five-year deal she signed in 2022.
Now we see that the NCAA Tournament appearance, and the three-win run that got the Cavaliers to the program’s first Sweet 16 in 26 years, only delayed the inevitable.
What’s going on here?
USA Today is reporting that “four people familiar with the situation at Virginia, including a staff member inside of the program with direct knowledge” – further identifying those people as “an NCAA women’s basketball head coach, two assistant coaches and an administrator” – had told the paper that Agugua-Hamilton had been the subject of an internal investigation that included allegations of staff mistreatment within the program.
A colleague of mine, Jerry Ratcliffe, added detail to what USA Today has had to say:
Coach Mox went through four creative video assistants in four years, one of them quitting on the spot after one dispute. She also fired two strength coaches, and would verbally “ream out” support staff with outbursts, according to sources.
“It was a toxic, nightmarish atmosphere,” one source said.
Ratcliffe also reported that several players with eligibility remaining had indicated that they were planning to enter the transfer portal to get away from the situation, which puts the move by former four-star 2023 recruit Olivia McGhee, who missed most of the 2025-2026 season with an ankle injury, to announce earlier in the week that she was planning to enter the portal, into perspective.
McGhee and Kymora Johnson, a five-star recruit in 2023, were the foundational pieces in the rebuild initiated by Agugua-Hamilton, who was hired in 2022 to take over a program that had been to only one NCAA Tournament in the previous 12 years, and was coming off a 5-22 season under Tina Thompson, whose final year as head coach included two forfeits.
McGhee is being joined in the portal by Yonta Vaughn, a 5’7” guard who sat out the 2025-2026 season, after an abbreviated 2024-2025 season in which she played in nine games, averaging 7.4 points per game, and Sa’Myah Smith, a 6’2” forward who averaged 7.9 points and 6.8 rebounds per game this past season.
The short-term focus would be on the decisions to be made by Johnson (19.5 ppg, 5.9 assists/g), a first-team All-ACC guard, and Tabitha Amanze (9.3 ppg, 5.9 rebounds/g), who both have one year of eligibility remaining.
It was already going to be a bit of a rebuild for Agugua-Hamilton going into the 2026-2027 season, with starters Paris Clark (9.7 ppg) and Romi Levy (8.2 ppg) and key reserves Caitlin Weimar (7.7 ppg, 5.7 rebounds/g) and Jillian Brown (2.8 ppg) having exhausted their eligibility.
Now, with those four already done, and Smith and McGhee headed to the portal, the focus turns to Williams, who is now 0-for-2 in her hires for the women’s hoops program, who needs to get somebody in place ASAP to give the new hire a fighting chance going into his or her Year 1.
The AD needs to get this one right
Williams, a double-digit scorer and All-SEC guard at Georgia in the 1980s, went the celebrity route with her first hire, Thompson, a WNBA legend with no head coaching experience, who flamed out big-time – 30-63 overall in her four years.
Agugua-Hamilton was the smart choice, on paper, anyway, to replace Thompson – a 74-15 record in three seasons at Missouri State, with two NCAA Tournament appearances and a Sweet 16.
With her hire, Williams was able to find money to help with the rebuild, in the form of Alexis Ohanian, a multimillionaire UVA alum, who pledged a $3 million gift to the program in 2024.
That’s not exactly eff you money there, if you see what I’m getting at – which I present as background to address the emails and texts I’m getting about who Williams needs to work on now, which focus on the bonkers idea that she should reach out to Dawn Staley, who has led South Carolina to eight Final Fours and three national titles, and counting.
To put the kibosh on that: South Carolina is paying Staley $4 million a year, and if she opts out for another college job, she owes the school the full value of the remaining contract, which runs through the 2029-2030 season, so – $16 million.
I don’t see UVA, which was paying Agugua-Hamilton $725,000 a year, coming up with $16 million to buy out Staley’s current contract, then another $25 million-plus to get her to commit to a long-term deal to come home.
Ain’t happenin’.
The short list
Jerry Ratcliffe suggested Kenny Brooks, the former JMU and Virginia Tech coach, now at Kentucky, and this one is at least somewhat possible: UK is set to pay Brooks an average of $1.66 million a year over the next three years.
The buyout if he were to leave early isn’t prohibitive – $500,000.
Virginia would still have to rifle through the couch cushions to probably offer Brooks into the $2 million-a-year range to get him to return to leave their Commonwealth for ours.
Another doable from Ratcliffe’s list is UCLA coach Cori Close, whose salary for the 2025-2026 season was $877,500, with incentives that pushed over the $1 million mark, and a $750,000 buyout.
One name that I’ll throw in, because my emails and texts are telling me that I’d better, is that of one of Staley’s early 1990s UVA teammates, Tammi Reiss, who was just hired at Florida after leading Rhode Island to a 138-73 record in her six seasons there.
Yes, it would be awkward to even try to lure Reiss from a job that she just took on, and I would wonder if her agent would have been in contact with the folks at UVA about the job there before she took the Florida job, if she’d had any interest.
That said, UF is set to pay Reiss an average of $950,000 per year, and the school is on the hook for her $900,000 buyout at Rhode Island, which I’d imagine Florida would want to be reimbursed for.
I can’t find details on what her UF buyout is, but I would guess it would be in the low seven figures, this early in.
The final name is one that I threw out there a few weeks ago – Tim Taylor, a former Debbie Ryan assistant, whose staff – which includes former Virginia standouts Sam Brunelle and Faith Randolph – was just named the Patriot League Staff of the Year, after leading Navy to a 21-7 regular-season record, and a 16-2 mark in league play.
ICYMI
Money wouldn’t be the issue here; to me, the issue would be, the UVA job is looked at as the top opening in the 2026 cycle, and I would think Williams is going to want to make a splashier hire than a former assistant who has had a little success in a one-bid conference.
Which isn’t to say that Taylor wouldn’t be a good hire, or that I wouldn’t expect him to produce results.
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Chris Graham
