UVA Women’s basketball gets verbal committment from North Carolina standout

By Jay Jenkins
Charlottesville Daily Progress
Published: April 2, 2008

Sitting in the stands for a women’s basketball game at Cameron Indoor Stadium on her own dime, Erinn Thompson noticed something strange in the first in-game huddle at Virginia’s bench.
It continued throughout the game after every stoppage.
Thompson, recently named the Associated Press women’s prep player of the year in North Carolina, was so intrigued by the activity she decided to e-mail Virginia coach Debbie Ryan about it.
“It was a team-bonding experiment and I picked up on it,” Thompson said. “As strong and as talented as the team was, you could still tell that they were a family. It doesn’t get any better than that.”
Virginia’s players were actually holding a rope in unison, adopting the mentality that if a player was falling off a cliff, they would need to trust whoever was on the other end of the rope.
Thompson, apparently, wants to hold the rope - the 6-foot-3 junior standout from Bishop McGuinness High in Winston-Salem, N.C., drove to Charlottesville on Tuesday to verbally commit to Ryan and her staff in person.
The secret was almost out of the bag when assistant coach Jeff House met Thompson, her parents and her high school coach, Brian Robinson, at the doors of John Paul Jones Arena.
“To be honest, we pulled up and I had a smile on my face,” Thompson joked. “I am sure he knew what was going on then.”
Shortly afterwards, Thompson told coach Ryan the news, giving Virginia two of the nation’s best prospects in the fold for the class of 2009-10.
After announcing her decision, Thompson said the room was quiet for a split-second before Ryan burst into the air and gave her a hug.
“Virginia is really the perfect fit for me. “It is truly a family. I am so blessed.”
As a junior, Thompson led Bishop McGuinness to its third straight state title, averaging 14.7 points, 12.1 rebounds and 3.1 blocks per game.
The numbers were skewed, her high school coach said, by her average playing time, just 17 minutes, in conference games.
Robinson said one of the things that makes Thompson an elite player is her desire to improve on every facet of the game.
“It has made her a much more difficult person to guard,” he said.
Thompson, who joins guard Lexie Gerson in the Class of 2010, shot 62 percent from the field and has the ability to shoot outside the paint.
In the regional final, Robinson estimated that half of Thompson’s team-high 20 points came on jumpers after she had stepped outside the middle. In the championship game, she won player of the game honors, defending the award she also claimed in the 2007 contest.
Wright earns honorable mention All-America nod
UVa sophomore guard Monica Wright was an honorable-mention selection to the AP All-America team.
LSU’s Sylvia Fowles, Connecticut’s Maya Moore, Oklahoma’s Courtney Paris, Tennessee’s Candace Parker and Stanford’s Candace Wiggins were named to the first team.
Maryland teammates Crystal Langhorne and Kristi Toliver were named to the second team, as was UNC’s Erlana Larkins. Duke’s Chante Black and Abby Waner, Maryland’s Marissa Coleman and Laura Harper, UNC’s LaToya Pringle and N.C. State’s Khadijah Whittington joined Wright as honorable mention selections.