Women’s Basketball: UVA holds on for 74-66 win over Coppin State

The UVA Women’s Basketball team led by 18 at halftime, but Coppin State made a game of it in the fourth quarter, cutting the margin to one midway through, before the Cavaliers put the game away late for a 74-66 win.

“Obviously, we made that pretty close at the end,” said UVA coach Amaka Agugua-Hamilton, whose team improved to 8-5 on the season.

“Give Coppin State a lot of credit for keeping their fight up. I was just happy that we didn’t crumble when we hit some adversity, and we were able to pull out the win,” Agugua-Hamilton said.

Reality check: this 8-5 record is against a schedule that ranks 285th nationally, according to WarrenNolan.com.

Virginia is 8-4 in nonconference games against a nonconference schedule that ranks 312th.

All eight wins are Quad 4s.

With the nonconference schedule now wrapped for the season, there are only three Quad 4 games left.

Six ACC teams are in the Top 25 of the NET.

This is on the verge of getting ugly, is what I’m getting at.

It could have been uglier in the Saturday matinee with Coppin State (8-6), which trailed 47-29 at the half, got the margin down to 13 with a 7-0 run in the final 2:38 of the third quarter, then went on a 16-4 run in the opening four minutes of the fourth quarter to pull within one with 4:13 to go.

An Olivia McGhee three with 1:56 to go extended the UVA lead to five, and after a Coppin State basket made it a one-possession game again, Edessa Noyan put the game away with a three with 57 seconds left.

Latasha Lattimore had 18 points and 10 rebounds to lead Virginia, Noyan had a career-high 16, and Kymora Johnson had 13 points and nine assists.

Agugua-Hamilton identified an obvious issue.

“We talked a lot about setting the tone in this game and every game we play at home, but particularly this pre-Christmas game. Sometimes players can be ready to go home for the holidays, and it’s hard to set the tone,” Agugua-Hamilton said. “I thought we did that, and then, obviously, in the third quarter, we got a little bit uninterested. But we were able to come back and get the win.”