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Healthy Outlook With A Return To Full Strength, Wahoos Take Aim At NCAA Tournament Berth P By Shane Mettlen erhaps the injury bug and bad luck that has hampered the Virginia women's basketball program the past few years has subsided. Whatever it is, Joanne Boyle enters her third season leading the Cavaliers with a renewed excitement around a program that was once an ACC and NCAA power, but has fallen on hard times in recent seasons. It's not that Boyle, who came to Virginia after successful stints as the head coach at Richmond and California and played for a very good program at Duke, doesn't know what it takes to lead a team to the NCAA Tournament. But the Cavaliers have suffered through a large number of injuries that took several key players out of commission. It got so bad last year that the Wahoos were 16‑14 and eligible for the postseason after a loss to Boston College in the first round of the ACC Tournament, but chose to decline an invitation to the Women's National Invitational Tournament, instead taking ex‑ tra days or weeks to heal. Heading into 2013‑14, the Cavaliers are more or less healthy. And while having enough players available for practice shouldn't seem like a luxury, it hasn't always happened at UVa lately. i22-24.Women's Basketball Preview.indd 1 "We're playing five on five and not having to use the practice guys every day, which is odd," Boyle told reporters in the preseason. "But it's nice because they start competing. It makes them compete." Last year, the Cavaliers showed flashes before the injuries really took hold. Virginia started 5‑1, the only loss by one point to Syracuse on a neutral court. By late January, Boyles' Hoos were 14-6 with three of those losses by six points or less. But the injuries were too much to overcome. Fourth-year guard Lexie Gerson had hip surgery and first-year guard Raeshaun Gaffney had a bum shin, with neither playing a game all season. Guard Kelsey Wolfe was the team's second-leading scorer before she hurt her knee late in the season. In the paint, departed fourth-years Telia McCall and Jaz‑ min Pitts both missed significant time after concus‑ sions. That doesn't even mention All-ACC guard Ataira Franklin, who played all of her third-year campaign but has dealt with knee troubles her entire Virginia career and had surgery last spring. There are plenty of reasons for optimism if all the Cavaliers can stay on the court this time around. The three leading scorers from last year's Virginia team 11/5/13 2:10 PM