Foul mood averted as Notre Dame WBB team escapes upset at Pitt
It was everything Niele Ivey could ask for in a game-ending scenario on the road from her 16th-ranked Notre Dame women’s basketball team.
Big stops. Big shots. Big swagger.
Big relief.
In a game against rebuilding Pittsburgh that probably shouldn’t have warranted it.
“This group, we’re still evolving,” coach Ivey said after the Irish survived 71-66 at the Petersen Events Center in Pittsburgh against a team coming off a 50-point loss to Virginia Tech.
“We're still trying to gain chemistry in the way that we play with different lineups and different rotations. So that’s how you learn. You have to learn when you’re in it. You have to learn while you’re performing.”
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The Irish (10-2, 1-1 ACC) will get to apply those lessons Sunday when North Carolina (10-4, 2-0) rolls into Purcell Pavilion on the tailwinds of its 75-51 romp over the Syracuse team that upended the Irish last Sunday in their ACC opener.
In Thursday night’s game, Notre Dame forged an early 26-6 lead, then gave it all back and then some. In fact, the Irish trailed early in the fourth quarter before beating the Panthers (6-9, 0-2) for the fifth straight time since Pitt upended Notre Dame in the first round of the 2020 Big East Tournament in Hall-of-Famer Muffet McGraw’s final game as Irish head coach.
All along the way they had to deal with foul trouble — 24 in all — and a late-third quarter injury to Maddy Westbeld that she did not return from when picking up foul No. 4 herself. Center Nat Marshall picked up her fifth foul before the third quarter ended.
Reserve forward Becky Obinma, starting forward Kylee Watson and freshman point guard Hannah Hidalgo all ended the game with four fouls. Former walk-on guard Sarah Cernugel was the only healthy player left on the Irish bench at game’s end.
“We talked about it at halftime, and talked about adjusting to the way the game was being called,” Ivey said. “Once you can see a call that is being called, you have to adjust to that. So, if that means it’s a hand check, if it means post defense, you have to adjust to the way the game was called. So, that’s what we talked about. That’s what we talked about in the timeouts. That’s another lesson for us.”
Westbeld was called for her fourth with 2:13 left in the third quarter, exactly 41 seconds after picking up No. 3. In both instances, she was guarding Pitt forward Liatu King, a 6-foot senior for whom Notre Dame didn’t have an answer.
On foul No. 3, King missed both free throws. On No. 4, she canned both on her way to a career-high 34 points to go along with a game-high 13 rebounds, and forged the game's first tie (41-41) since it was 0-0. But Westbeld took a hard blow to the face on the play that preceded the two made free throws, with a split lip only part of the issue.
“What I was told was when she got hit in the face, she was nauseous,” Ivey said of Westbeld, who contributed 17 points and six rebounds before her departure. “I made the team aware that that was the situation we were in, knowing that Maddy was not going to be able to return.
"So, it was a focus of ours that we had to defend without fouling. We’ve got to finish the game. I’ve never been in that situation [with that many players in foul trouble and that short of a bench], and [I'm] just happy that we only had one to foul out.”
Hidalgo led the late charge, with the nation’s No. 3 leading scorer amassing 11 of her team-high 24 points in the final 8:32 of the game, including giving the Irish the lead for good on a jumper in the paint with 8:06 left. But others stepped up as well, including Watson.
She scored her first points of the game on a three-point play with 6:49 left that Hidalgo followed with a 3 from the arc for a seven-point Irish cushion. Watson also knocked down a couple of free throws with 3:14 left.
“It was huge. ... I’m so proud of her staying with it,” Ivey said of Watson. “I know she was frustrated early on. She stepped up exactly when we needed her to, and I’m really proud of her for that.”
There’s plenty to clean up against a Pitt team that outrebounded the Irish (37-30), put together a 19-2 first-half run against them to get back into the game, and held them to 10 straight missed shots during an eight-point third quarter for Notre Dame.
For the game, the nation’s No. 10 shooting team (.498) shot their lowest percentage (41%) from the field — against Pitt, the nation's No. 190 team in field goal-percentage defense, no less — since a .329 showing against current No. 1-ranked South Carolina in the season opener, with the Gamecocks leading the country in field goal-percentage D.
“I thought we got stagnant offensively,” Ivey said. “I thought we started really strong. We got the looks that we wanted, the looks that we worked on. And then in the second quarter, we didn’t see the looks that were open, and then missed shots and didn’t get the offensive rebound. I thought that was the difference.”
Anna DeWolfe added 11 for the Irish, with three 3s, joining Hidalgo and Westbeld in double figures. The Fordham grad transfer and reigning Atlantic 10 Player of the Year joined the 2,000-career-point club in the process.
“I wasn’t really thinking about it, to be honest,” she said. “It’s been a long five years. I can’t believe I’m still playing. I’m just super grateful and happy to be here.”
And Ivey was all smiles too, happy and grateful the lessons learned were in an escape rather than another upset loss.
“Down the stretch, when we needed to get defensive stops, we got them,” she said. “And we executed and made some big-time plays. … Happy for the win, ready to prepare for Sunday.”
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