![\"Virginia](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-2268844572-1024x683.jpg\")
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Amaka Agugua-Hamilton led the Cavaliers to the Sweet 16 in her fourth and final season leading the program. Thien-An Truong \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
April 4, 2026Updated 3:11 pm EDT<\/p>\n
In one of the more stunning turns of the coaching carousel, Virginia announced Saturday that women\u2019s basketball coach Amaka Agugua-Hamilton will not be returning to the program despite just guiding the Cavaliers to the Sweet 16.<\/p>\n
The Cavaliers confirmed the news via a short, vague statement on their athletics website.<\/p>\n
\u201cVirginia Athletics announced today (April 4) Amaka Agugua-Hamilton will not return as head coach of the women\u2019s basketball program. Agugua-Hamilton finished her four-year tenure at UVA with a 70-58 record, including a 29-42 mark in ACC play. A national search will begin immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n
Agugua-Hamilton came to Virginia ahead of the 2022-23 season and just led the Cavaliers to their most wins in a season in more than a decade, since 2011-12. The Cavaliers (22-12) were the Cinderellas of this year\u2019s NCAA Tournament, going from the play-in round as a No. 10 seed to taking down No. 2 Iowa on its home floor in double overtime to earn a Sweet 16 berth. The Sweet 16 berth was Virginia\u2019s first since 2000, with South Carolina coach and Virginia alum Dawn Staley even saying last week that the Cavaliers were back to their \u201cglory days.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking to reporters Saturday at the Final Four in Phoenix, Staley said she reached out to Virginia athletic director Carla Williams upon hearing the news, \u201cand she just told me that they did part ways. I don\u2019t know why. She said we\u2019ll talk, we\u2019ll talk soon.\u201d<\/p>\n
Added Staley, \u201cI reached out to Coach Mox as well just to check on her. \u2026 I don\u2019t know what went wrong, but I think she had them on the right track, and I hope we get it together. We\u2019ve got a deeply rich tradition at UVA on this stage, and we hope to get our team back there one day sooner than later.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before coming to UVA, Agugua-Hamilton coached at Missouri State, where she made consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances and took the program to the Sweet 16 in the 2021 tournament.<\/p>\n
This story will be updated.<\/p>\n
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Apr 4, 2026<\/p>\n
Connections: Sports Edition<\/p>\n
Spot the pattern. Connect the terms<\/p>\n
Find the hidden link between sports terms<\/p>\n
Play today’s puzzle<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amaka Agugua-Hamilton led the Cavaliers to the Sweet 16 in her fourth and final season leading the program.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":853800,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7,49,48,4718,5481],"class_list":{"0":"post-853799","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-virginia-cavaliers","12":"tag-womens-college-basketball"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116348074039140498","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=853799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/853800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=853799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=853799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=853799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}