Virginia Cavaliers
Both Kymora Johnson (right) and Yonta Vaughn average at least 4.2 assists for Virginia. ~ Photo by Kris Wright/TheSabre.com

The Virginia women’s basketball team rolled into the exam break at 7-2 this season with wins against Missouri and Tulane among the highlights, while the two losses both came to teams ranked in the top 25 at the time. UVA has two more non-conference games before ACC play begins on New Year’s Eve with NC State at the John Paul Jones Arena.

The Hoos kept the victories coming in and delighting fans despite lineup shuffles as multiple players missed games with injuries. Sam Brunelle, London Clarkson, Paris Clark, and Kaydan Lawson all missed at least two games. One reason the flow kept going, though, is the play of two steady point guards for Virginia.

True freshman Kymora Johnson and sophomore Yonta Vaughn give the Wahoos a dynamic one-two punch that challenges opponents throughout the game. Both have averaged more than 4 assists per game with Johnson at 4.8 and Vaughn at 4.2, the only ACC team with a pair of players at 4.2 or higher currently.

Johnson has piled up 4 games with at least 6 assists, dishing out a season-high 9 against Tulane with 7 against both Campbell and Missouri plus 6 Oklahoma. Just before the break, she lit up La Salle for 17 points and 4 assists too.

Vaughn, meanwhile, has 3 games with at least 6 assists. She opened the season with 8 against Maryland Eastern Shore and had 6 assists in the LaSalle game as well. She also posted 13 points and 7 assists against LSU in the Cayman Islands.

Johnson came in with a scoring reputation too. The four-star recruit from nearby St. Anne’s-Belfield tallied 23.9 points per game as a senior and 21.7 points per game as a junior. She has at least 7 points in every game this season and has averaged 11.1 per game early in her career here.

For Vaughn, she focused on being more assertive in that way this offseason as she noted in the preseason that “scoring at all three levels” was a focus for her as a “pass-first guard” by nature. She 3.4 points per game last season and that’s up to 5.0 as a sophomore. On a team with many weapons, it doesn’t have to climb super high to be dangerous. It’s the aggressiveness and effectiveness that packs the punch. She averaged just 4.7 shot attempts last season in 18.6 minutes per game. That’s up to 5.3 so far this season and more importantly, her 3-point percentage has climbed 12 points from 24.6% to 36.0%.

Having more of an attack mindset, she said, grows with time.

“It’s all mental,” Vaughn said in the preseason. “You get in the gym and you work and the confidence builds and it builds and it builds. Then you just go out there and you rely on your talent.”

The Hoos certainly don’t mind relying on their double-edged talent at point guard this season. With Johnson starting and Vaughn running the show off the bench, UVA is giving opponents more than 20 minutes each to deal with each night from the duo. Johnson has started all 9 games and averages 26.0 minutes, while Vaughn checks in for 20.3 minutes per game as well.

“I think it’s great,” Virginia coach Amaka Agugua-Hamilton said. “Obviously Mo starts for us and then when Yonta comes off the bench, we can still run our offense, we still have an understanding, and a commanding presence. They set people up, but both of them can really score as well. Scoring point guards are great, but facilitating point guards and having both of those together is really going to help us because now people can’t just play off of us at the point guard spot and double other people. They have to respect them but now our point guards have the IQ and understand the system where they can draw two and kick or set up our bigs in the ball screen or things like that. I think they’re both doing a great job.”