IOWA CITY, Iowa – Kymora Johnson wasn’t sure she wanted to go to the college that was just minutes from where she grew up. Now, the dynamic guard has led her hometown team to its first Sweet Sixteen in 26 years.
With her second straight 28-point game, Johnson played all 50 minutes and led 10th-seeded Virginia to a double-overtime 83-75 win Monday against second-seeded Iowa to advance to the Sweet Sixteen. The Cavaliers will face third-seeded TCU on Saturday at Golden 1 Center in Sacramento, Calif.
Virginia is the first double-digit seed to advance to the Sweet Sixteen since 2022 and the first First Four play-in team ever to advance past the opening weekend.
The Cavaliers trailed by as many as nine points in the four quarter but kept coming back to eventually win after two overtimes in front of about 14,000 fired-up Hawkeye fans who showed up to Carver-Hawkeye Arena on an early Monday afternoon.
“Iowa is a really good team. They’re a two-seed for a reason,” Virginia head coach Amaka Agugua-Hamilton told reporters after the game. “No matter what they threw at us, we just did not get rattled. We just believed that we were going to win this game before it even started. Every time they punched, we punched back, stayed poised.”
A highly-recruited Charlottesville, Va., native, Johnson didn’t even have Virginia on her radar until their new coach won her over.
“When I first committed to Virginia [in September 2022], Coach Mox and the staff hadn’t even played a game at Virginia yet,” Johnson told reporters after the game. “It was definitely a leap of faith, but I put my trust in the Lord and followed my heart, and it got me here, and I wouldn’t go back and change anything.”
She credits her relationship with Agugua-Hamilton for her success and the team’s turnaround.
“When she first called me, I’m going to be honest, I was not coming to Virginia, but I gave it a couple rings and finally picked up. As soon as the first conversation happened, I knew this was where I was destined to be. I followed my heart and it led me to Virginia. I literally live five minutes from the ‘Grounds,’ and I wouldn’t want it any other way,” Johnson said. “We have a great relationship, and not a lot of players can say they have such a good relationship with their coach, so I’m really blessed to be in this position. I love you.”
Agugua-Hamilton responded with “I love you, too.” She is also a Virginia native who wanted to bring the program back to its glory days after it hit a skid in the late 2010s.
“That’s why I came to Virginia. I chose Virginia. I had a lot of options,” she said. “We had a great run at my last school [Missouri State], and I wanted to go to Virginia for many reasons. When I was growing up, Coach Ryan, Debbie Ryan, who’s here and has been a great supporter since we’ve been here, I watched her, and I joke a lot – I’ll say that even now because she didn’t recruit me when I was growing up, but it’s cool, we’re friends now. But I watched her and also Dawn Staley and a lot of the greats that came through here. Wendy Palmer, Tammi Reiss, the list goes on and on. But I knew where this program has been, and I always remembered wanting to play at Virginia, and I just wanted to be a part of bringing it back to the glory days.”
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Getting hometown hero Johnson to buy into her plan was her first priority when she was named Virginia’s coach in March 2020.
“I wanted to get young kids that could grow and we can build this thing, we can lay a foundation rather than – we utilize the transfer portal, but rather than going in and getting a whole bunch of older kids and we can’t sustain some kind of culture, and Mo led the charge with that, and she’s somebody that it was very difficult to get her on the ‘Grounds,’” she said. “Like it took – she lives less than two miles away, and it took probably two months, my first two months there to even get her to come and talk to us. I literally passed her house on the way home every day. Once she did and once we clicked, we knew we had a special kid.”
“It’s not just her talent. Obviously you see she can do whatever she wants on the basketball court and she works hard. She’s gifted, but she wants to master her craft. She’s a student of the game. We watch film after games, all that stuff,” she added. “But it’s who she is as a person and her selfless nature, her giving nature, her high character. She really is like an ambassador for our sport and obviously for our program.”
Senior guard Paris Clark, who added 20 points against Iowa, hit two consecutive three-pointers and a jumper to cut the Hawkeyes’ nine-point lead to one in the fourth quarter. She also saw Agugua-Hamilton’s vision when she transferred to Virginia from Arizona her sophomore year.
“This is a really special moment for us, just being here all these three years, coming to Virginia, seeing the vision of Coach Mox,” Clark told reporters after the game. “It’s hard to put into words but I’m so proud of this group, I’m proud of our coaching staff, just the trust that we have in each other and this program. It just means everything to finally see it come into place.”
Disappointing end to surprising season
Jan Jensen didn’t know what to expect coming into her second season as Iowa’s head coach. Caitlin Clark and Co. had been gone for more than a year and the Hawkeye roster was its youngest in years with 10 of the 14 spots filled by underclassmen.
Picked to finish seventh in the Big Ten, Iowa ended its regular season 26-6 overall and placed second in the conference standings.
“Nobody really had us in that top 5 in the Big Ten conference, and we had a lot of youth. We had sprinkled with some stellar young women who were seniors,” Jensen told reporters after the game. “But as we began the trajectory, it was a lot of the young people that were stepping up. Ava Heiden burst on to the scene, Taylor Stremlow became a pretty key, pretty steady leader, [Chazadi] ‘Chit-Chat’ Wright showed on occasion what she was going to be capable of doing. Overall, a heck of a year. This type of ending, definitely disappointing.”
“But when I briefly looked at the box score, I don’t believe we deserved to win it,” she added. “Virginia, hats off. They came in here and you win — sometimes when you’re that underdog — in March, most people cheer for the underdog. You can play with a lot less pressure, and you come in here and you’re just kind of rolling and they get one and they get two and what do you got to lose.”
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Like it did against Iowa’s first-round win over Fairleigh-Dickinson, three-point shooting plagued the Hawkeyes as they went 5-29. Shaky free-throw shooting, including several misses in the second overtime, also hurt Iowa who went 8-16 from the line compared to Virginia’s 18-23.
“…When you look at categories that need to happen, the free throws, the shooting percentage, you just — that hurts because those things are a little bit more controllable,” Jensen said. “…Eventually our poor free-throw shooting is going to catch up with you. We’ve gotten by, and I’d like the record to state we have worked on it. I’d also like the record to state that no one feels worse than the people that miss it, but that’ll forever be something we have to contend with in a social media world. But missed free throws, ill advised shots, missed really good shots, and a team that was very good at making big shots.”
Monday’s loss marked the end of college careers for Hannah Stuelke, Kylie Feuerbach, Taylor McCabe and Jada Gyamfi, all who were a part of Iowa’s two Final Four teams that advanced to the National Championship game two years in a row.
“I’m just really grateful,” Jensen said of her seniors. “This is a new era of athletics. We talk about it, the rev share, the branding, the NIL, all the things. You can jump things pretty quickly, pretty easily, make a little more bucks, play a little more. But these guys, they held.”
Stuelke, who is in some mock drafts for the WNBA draft, reflected on her time playing just a half hour from her home in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
“I’m really thankful for the opportunity to play here. It’s been a lot of fun. Just spending time with these – she’s going to make me cry. Spending time with these girls has been such a blessing to me,” Stuelke told reporters. “Obviously not the way we wanted the game to go, but yeah, I think I’ll carry it throughout my life and learn from it, and I’ll be a stronger person for it.”
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