After a memorable run to the sweet 16, Head Coach Amaka Agugua-Hamilton is out as the Virginia Women’s Basketball Coach. Her tenure ran for four years long beginning in March of 2022.
In her first year, Coach Mox tallied 15 wins going .500 which was much better than the prior year where the Cavaliers won only 5 games. She then led the ‘Hoos to 16 wins and 17 wins the following couple of seasons leading up to her most successful year being this year winning 22 games and making a trip to the sweet 16.
One of the brightest moments of Coach Mox’s tenure included recruiting star Kymora Johnson who has been one of the greatest UVA Women’s Basketball players of all time. Coach Mox also led Virginia to a couple of big upsets throughout her tenure. Between beating number 5 Virginia Tech on senior night in 2024, to number 8 UNC in 2025, and multiple top 25 upsets through it all. Potentially the biggest win in the Coach Mox era was upsetting 2 seeded Iowa in March Madness this year on their home floor to advance to the sweet 16. Virginia was the final team to make the NCAA Tournament and made some noise advancing past Iowa to the third round of the tournament becoming the first “first four in” team to ever do so.
So, having gone to the sweet 16 and some other notable accomplishments begs the question, why move away from her now? A good comparison would be Kevin Keatts and NC State a few years ago on the men’s side. Coach Keatts had been on the hot seat with NC State; however, he led the Wolfpack to an ACC title gaining an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament where State advanced all the way to the final 4, saving Keatts’ job. The following year, NC State would go a brutal 12-19 only winning 5 conference games. Coach Keatts was fired following that season. The point is that Virginia likely wants to avoid this sort of situation. While the sweet 16 run was memorable and the best run Virginia has shown since 2000, it does not change the fact that Coach Mox and the ‘Hoos struggled through the regular season and was an early exit in the ACC Tournament.
The timing of this move is very odd though. Virginia never fully announced that she was fired, just that the program was moving in a different direction. However, if Virginia was going to make a move one would sort of expect it to come very shortly after the Cavalier’s loss in the sweet 16 to TCU. The move comes a week later and very unexpectedly. There are rumors that there was stuff happening on the inside, believe what you want but the timing and wording the Athletic Department used was a bit odd. Maybe I am completely wrong, just spit balling here.
Overall, Coach Mox certainly brought some joy to UVA Women’s hoops, a program that was in the trenches years ago. However, the writing seemed to be on the wall regardless of Virginia’s run in the NCAA Tournament. UVA has announced that a National Coaching search will begin immediately.