COMMITMENT: UVA Women’s Basketball Lands Sweden’s Edessa Noyan

The Virginia Cavaliers started out last season with just 11 players on the roster and, by season’s end, the team was down to just 9 players. Coach Agugua-Hamilton is determined that that never happen again. Although they have not announced it officially, the athletic department retweeted Edessa Noyan’s commitment tweet:

Noyan is a 19-year old center who still appears to be growing. She has played in Sweden’s top professional league, the Damligan, for the past two years for perennial power Sodertalje BBK. She committed last November to San Francisco, but Coach Mox apparently is working the Scandanavian circuit hard, having recently made offers to 2025 forward/wing Lourdes da Silva Costa and 2026 guard Kayla Jade Frier.

In addition to playing alongside grown, professional women, Noyan also starred for Sweden’s U18 national team. That team won the 2022 Nordic Championship as she averaged 18.8 points and 9 boards playing against women her own age. During the U18 European Championships, Noyan was Sweden’s most efficient player according to the advanced metrics, as well as the team’s second-leading scorer and rebounder.

She’s listed as a center on Sodertalje roster, but San Francisco listed her as forward. In the two clips I saw of her, she flashed the ball-handling skills of a wing. If Noyan is 6’ 3”, coupled with the arrival of new transfer Taylor Lauterbach, Coach Mox will be able to field some serious size in next year’s ACC.

Noyan is the third player to announce for Virginia in the past week, joining the aforementioned Taylor Lautenbach and Paris Clark. Alongside 2023’s top-50 recruits Mo Johnson and Olivia McGhee, Coach Mox now has 13 players under scholarship for the next season. Last year, when everyone was healthy, Coach Mox regularly went 10-deep, so I suspect the battle for playing time is going to be fierce.