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16 CAVALIER CORNER BY PATRICK BOLING F ormer Virginia women's basketball "ball girl" Kymora Johnson is now the Cavaliers' star player — as a true first-year, no less. A native of Char- lottesville, Johnson vividly recalls working behind the scenes at John Paul Jones Arena when she was roughly 10 years old, wiping up sweat off the floor and rebounding for the Hoos during warmups. Now, she's the focal point of the opposing team each and every game. Johnson displayed one of the most impressive first-year campaigns by a UVA player in recent memory, one in which she was rewarded with second-team All-ACC and All-Freshman honors —the first Wahoo rookie to earn all-conference recognition since Brandi Teamer in 2002 — after lead- ing the Hoos in scoring (15.6 points per game), assists (5.4) and steals (1.8). But it almost didn't happen. Although Johnson, a McDonald's high school All-American, received an offer from the previous Virginia coaching staff, she was weighing all options amid a coaching change at UVA in March 2022. "I hadn't been recruited by Virginia [heav- ily] until basically [Coach Mox] got here," Johnson said. Current UVA head coach Amaka "Mox" Agugua-Hamilton has publicly joked it was hard to get Johnson on the phone and eventually on Grounds early in the recruiting process. "At first, I was like, 'No,'" Johnson ex- plained. "I had already turned my head and was going the other way. I told her straight up, and I think that's why we have such a good relationship [now]. "It's just the honesty." But ultimately it was Agugua-Hamilton's renewed vision for the program that sold Johnson on becoming a Wahoo. "I needed to see something. So then, when Sam [Brunelle] committed here, it was like, 'Boom! OK, so somebody believes in her vision.' Then [Olivia McGhee] committed here and I was like, 'Oh, yeah, this must be a real thing.' I knew they were great kids and they wouldn't steer me wrong. So, I knew I wanted to follow in their footsteps." Like many others who reside in the Char- lottesville area, Johnson was well aware of the program's rich history, which peaked in the early 1990s when then-head coach Debbie Ryan and National Player of the Year Dawn Staley guided the Hoos to three con- secutive Final Fours, including the UVA's only national championship appearance in 1991. "I watched the progress over the summer. And I knew what this place had been. And that was another important part to me — I wanted to put it back on the map. I wanted to make Virginia what it was, and so that was part of it." Brunelle and McGhee are also from the Charlottesville area. Brunelle, who was also a McDonald's All-American, was the first player to sign under Agugua-Hamilton upon transferring to UVA after a three-year stint at Notre Dame, from which she graduated in only three years. In 2022-23, Brunelle, Agugua-Hamilton and the Cavaliers finished with a 15-15 overall record, despite the team being decimated by injuries. Shortly after Brunelle signed, McGhee committed, which made her Agugua-Hamilton's first high school prospect to do so. On Sept. 12, 2022 — nearly six months after Agugua- Hamilton was hired — Johnson announced her commitment to UVA. Agugua-Hamilton described Johnson as a "high-character kid who is a giver," and as someone who "leads by example, especially from the point guard spot, but always re- mains a team player." TURNING POINT Johnson and the Hoos won their first three games this season before falling to eventual Big 12 regular-season champion Oklahoma. The Cavaliers went on to win five of their first seven games; their second loss was by only three points (76-73) to the reigning NCAA champion LSU Tigers at the Cayman Islands Classic. But a 71-70 loss to Wofford, which drilled a game-winning basket at the buzzer, proved to be a turning point in Johnson's young collegiate career. After the game, Agugua-Hamilton chal- lenged Johnson to be a more vocal leader in the locker room and more assertive with the ball, despite being a first-year point guard with just nine games of experience under her belt. "That was definitely a big, crucial turn- ing point for myself and the team," Johnson said. "I think we all knew how bad it was as a loss. We knew how our performance reflected in the loss, but I think that we literally just never wanted to experience any- thing like that again, especially me. "At first, I was little hesitant to be a leader on the team and use my voice. I wasn't very talkative at the beginning. And then after [the loss], I just felt like we needed some leadership and needed another voice other than Coach Mox to step in and say, 'Hey, we got to do this, we got to make a change.' So, the next two days, I really challenged myself to overly use my voice." Johnson grinned. "I think I lost my voice at the end of that week from talking too much, also running too much," she added. The Wofford loss was UVA's last to a non-ACC opponent. The Cavaliers posted a dominant 82-56 win over Fordham to close out their nonconference slate. Against the Rams, Virginia shot better than 50 percent from the field for the first time of the season after knocking down a dozen three-pointers. Johnson recorded her first (of many to fol- low) 20-point games, finishing with 26 points on 10-of-13 shooting, including a 6-of-7 effort from beyond the arc. Despite a strong response to close out its nonconference schedule, Virginia dropped its first six ACC contests. The losing skid fea- tured five opponents that participated in the 2023 NCAA Tournament. HOMETOWN HOMETOWN STAR STAR First-Year Point Guard Kymora Johnson Did Her Part To Help Lead The Turnaround For UVA Women's Basketball Johnson earned second-team All-ACC and All-Freshman honors after leading the Hoos in scoring (15.6 points per game), as- sists (5.4) and steals (1.8). She is the first UVA player to earn All-ACC accolades as a first-year since Brandi Teamer did so in 2002. (Photo courtesy UVA)