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FEBRUARY 2023 19 ting her flashy passing skills on display. After finishing last in the ACC in rebound- ing last year, UVA was ranked in the top 25 in the nation in multiple defensive cat- egories including rebounds per game and rebounding margin through late January. "We talk about grind now, shine later, be- cause we just want to focus on the work," Agu- gua-Hamilton said. "We don't want to focus on, 'Are we going to win a championship?' 'Are we going to do this?' Of course, we have goals, and we want to celebrate small victories along the way, but just focus on the things we can control. Let's get better today. Let's get better in this practice, in this moment. Let's grow, and the results will take care of themselves. "We have enough talent, and I'm confident I can put them in positions to be successful, myself and my staff, but just focus on the things we can control. That's kind of where that grind now, shine later comes from." The Cavaliers' win streak came to an end with a 70-56 loss at Duke right before Christmas. In its first game back, the team responded to the setback with a 69-63 win against Georgia Tech, an NCAA Tournament team each of the last two years. The Cavaliers then hit a rough stretch of playing three straight games against ranked opponents, including back-to-back road games at top-10 teams. UVA suffered its big- gest loss of the year at No. 10 North Carolina State, dropping the game and losing leading scorer and rebounder Mir McLean, a third-year guard/forward, to a season-ending knee injury. "It's not always going to be great," Agugua- Hamilton had said to the team weeks before the NC State game. "There are going to be hard times. There's going to be adversity. But we are going to get through it together." The players have bought into that state- ment, showing solidarity and togetherness as they work through their new rotations, which they showed off in their emotional 66-50 comeback victory against Boston College at John Paul Jones Arena a week after McLean's injury. She was the one cheering loudest on the bench as third-year guard Kaydan Lawson posted her first career double-double (11 points, 15 rebounds), while fourth-year forward London Clarkson set the school record for free throw shooting (14 of 14) in a single game. Brunelle scored the 1,000th point of her collegiate career in that Boston College game. The way that her teammates and the crowd erupted when it happened, it felt like she had scored all 1,000 of them while wearing orange and blue instead of just the 200 most recent. Her coach summed up the excitement surrounding the entire program. "It's great to come home and do this in my home state at a school that I've always wanted to be at," Agugua-Hamilton said. "I'm just happy fans are excited about women's basketball again. It's a storied program, and there's so much potential here to get back to those glory days. And I'm just excited that we're going to do that." There are several more achievements that the team hopes to add to the "first time since" list this year, but the biggest involves hearing their name called during the NCAA Selection Show March 12. Until then, it's grind now, shine even more later. CAMRYN TAYLOR SETS THE TONE FOR UVA'S RESURGENCE Virginia fourth-year forward Camryn Taylor made it clear that she planned to return with a vengeance this year after missing the end of 2021-22 season for personal reasons. "There are so many things that come with this team, especially the energy that we all bring, but I think I'm most excited about how we all are just going to come in and just dominate," Taylor said of the Cavaliers at ACC Tipoff, weeks before the season began. "I re- ally want to dominate this year." Through the first three months of the 2022-23 season, she is getting that wish. Taylor made a huge splash last year. She scored 27 points her first game for the Cavaliers after transferring from Marquette, and she was leading the team in both scor- ing (12.8 points per game) and rebounding (6.1) through 12 games when she stepped away from the team in January to deal with the loss of her mother, Nichole Altez Handy, who passed away at the age of 43 after 10 bouts with various forms of cancer. "My mom was my best friend, so it was hard for me to deal with that," Taylor told The Daily Progress prior to the start of this season. "But Coach [Amaka Agugua-Hamilton] was very understanding and she always checks in like, 'Are you OK? Are you doing good?'" Taylor came back this year stronger than ever. She opened the season with another 20-point game, tallying 22 points in 27 minutes against George Washington and finished in double figures in six of her first seven games en route to scoring the 1,000th point of her collegiate career in January. "She brings so much energy to this team that you're always going to know that she'll go 100 percent on every single possession," graduate student guard McKenna Dale told The Daily Progress when asked about Taylor. "And she's an athletic scorer, but she's going to put the team first and she's going to do whatever she can to help her teammates along. "She's an incredible leader and we all have so much respect for what she had to do, how she's come back even stronger." Through 20 games this season, Taylor led the Cavaliers' balanced attack with a career- high 13.0 points per game, while ranking second with 6.0 rebounds per outing. She has also given the Cavaliers a dependable presence in the paint, averaging 1.0 steal and 0.9 blocks per game while helping lead a Virginia defense that was allowing just 59.6 points per game (tied for 21st nationally among Power Five schools). "I'm watching Cam walk into her confidence, walk into her passion, walk into her po- tential and it's night and day to see from when I got here," Agugua-Hamilton told The Daily Progress. "You could tell she had walls up. She wasn't looking people in their eyes, and now she lights up every day. "Every day we come in and get ready for practice, and she's screaming, 'Let's go. Let's go.' She just has a renewed sense of life and a passion for everything she does, and I couldn't be more proud of her." — Melissa Dudek Through 20 games this season, Taylor led UVA's balanced at- tack with 13.0 points per game and ranked second with 6.0 rebounds per contest. (Photo by Matt Riley/courtesy UVA)