Defense rescues No. 5 Irish in sloppy road win over Miami
Notre Dame knew what was coming.
Even with a quick scan of the Miami stats, it jumps off the page — the Hurricanes force almost 21 turnovers a game, 34th-best in the country.
Here’s the unsettling part: The No. 5-ranked Irish still couldn’t handle the Miami heat.
And here’s the lucky part: Despite a whopping 22 turnovers — seven more than the team average — and an uncharacteristic 8-for-15 performance from the free-throw line, the 11-1 Irish (2-0 ACC) survived in a wild finish, 66-63, in front of 2,153 in the Watsco Center in Coral Gables, Fla., on Thursday evening.
“It's a great win on the road against a great team,” Notre Dame head coach Niele Ivey said. “There are a lot of areas that we can improve on. We'll go back to work and improve on the things that we need to improve on and get ready for Boston College (Sunday at home at noon). But again, just happy that this group found a way to grind this one out.”
Miami, 7-6 (0-2 ACC) doesn’t do a lot of things especially well, but its energetic man-to-man defense with quick hands and great positioning can cause tons of trouble.
The turnovers came from every angle — dribbling into trouble, risky passing, forcing the ball into tight coverage and sometimes simply loss of focus.
Even star point guard Olivia Miles, on a triple-double watch most of the game (12 points, nine assists, eight rebounds), got picked a couple times and had a team-leading five turnovers.
“I think everything that we do starts on defense, and then as you can see we turn the ball over a lot, so we’ve just got to get together and take what they give us (rather than forcing passes),” Notre Dame junior forward Maddy Westbeld said.
Miami’s opponents were shooting 41.7 from the field and scoring at a 63-point pace coming in — even after a 92-85 loss to Florida State — and the Irish needed a lot of point-blank looks to get to 46.6% for the game.
The serious trouble began with the second-half whistle. Notre Dame, leading 41-31 out of the break, had three turnovers in its first four possessions.
Game on.
Nineteen of Miami’s points in the game came off turnovers, and it had 22 fastbreak points to Notre Dame’s six.
Lashae Dwyers’ steal of a Miles dribble and subsequent breakaway bucket tied it at 51 with two minutes still to go in the third period.
“I thought we didn't come out locked in,” Ivey said. “But I felt like, progressively, we found ways to execute in the stretches that we needed to.”
Notre Dame had an answer as long as it could control the possession. It had a decided height and talent advantage inside.
The front court of Westbeld (15 points), Lauren Ebo (11) and Kylee Watson (2) all had buckets inside 15 feet over the final five minutes, and guard Sonia Citron (13 points) drove the baseline for a layup at the 1:25 mark to produce a 66-63 lead.
There was still plenty of drama to go.
Miami got a couple of clean 3-point looks, one by Destiny Harden and the second by Karla Erjavec, and the second miss set off a long video-replay by officials over possession, off a batted rebound with 37.4 seconds to play.
The original call was reversed, and Notre Dame was awarded the ball — yet it still couldn’t find a way to ride it out.
Harden swiped a Citron pass near the three-quarters-court mark — the ’Canes’ 15th steal — and Miami called a timeout with 19 seconds to play.
On the ensuing possession, the Hurricanes couldn’t find anything inside. Under pressure from Notre Dame’s Dara Mabrey, Harden missed a 3, but the carom wound up in Dwyer’s hands. Another timeout followed and the second time, Harden got a clean shot off a good screen but the ball bounced off the back of the rim with three seconds left.
Westbeld got the rebound to end it. It was her team-leading 11th (Ebo had 10), to spark a 42-37 rebounding edge for the Irish.
“You know, this is our second big road test,” Ivey said, noting the win over a ranked Virginia Tech team earlier this month. “We haven't been in a lot of these moments yet — having an opportunity to win the game on a defensive play, not on the offensive play. So I thought we've grown from that.
“The last time we had that was versus Maryland, and it didn't turn out our way (74-72 loss). So I think all these types of games are only going to make us better in the ACC and, hopefully, the postseason.”
There was nothing wrong with the Irish defense, which forced 34.7% shooting from the field and 14.3% from the 3-point line (2-for-14).
The contest marked the brief debut of five-star recruit Cassandre Prosper. The 6-foot-2 Montreal product, who has enrolled early, entered the game late in the first half and contributed a rebound, a block and a turnover in three minutes.
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