On a rare night when freshman Hannah Hidalgo stood still on the Notre Dame all-time steals chart, the nation’s leader in takeaways found other ways to make the Earth shake.
Many ways, in fact, including a career-high 34 points in an 82-67 takedown of No. 8 UConn Saturday night at sold-out Gampel Pavilion in Storrs, Conn.
In a national primetime TV broadcast that put the 15th-ranked Irish in the epicenter of women’s college basketball for one night, they played like they belonged in the brightest of spotlights roughly 48 hours after a crushing lost opportunity at home against 22nd-ranked Syracuse.
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In the process, ND (15-4) truncated a UConn’s 13-game win streak in which all but one victory had come by 24 points or more, and the one that didn’t was a 12-point triumph over a North Carolina team that beat the Irish in South Bend earlier this month.
“It’s not easy going through a lot of growing pains,” a jubilant Irish coach Niele Ivey said following the first Irish win in Storrs since 2013. “But just to see a little light at the end of the tunnel with some things we’ve been working on is just really amazing.”
They’ll take their next step — a road game at Georgia Tech (13-7, 4-4) on Thursday night — with some clarity — at least publicly, now — that All-American guard Olivia Miles will sit out the rest of the season. Miles, who scored 31 points in last season’s 74-60 win over UConn, hasn’t played in a game since suffering a knee injury in last season’s regular-season finale at Louisville on Feb. 26.
Miles was shooting around on the Gampel Pavilion court before the game and told FOX Sports play-by-play man Gus Johnson of her plan. He then shared it during the broadcast, and a Notre Dame spokesperson confirmed the report shortly after the question surprised Ivey in the postgame press conference.
There was plenty that didn’t surprise her Saturday night, including Hidalgo’s poise and her continuing assault on the Notre Dame record book. The 5-foot-6 guard’s 34 points broke the Irish freshmen single season record held by Michelle Marciniak (33 points) in her only season at ND (1991-92) before transferring and finishing at Tennessee.
Hidalgo also had six assists and a team-high 10 rebounds, the latter helping the Irish to a 37-27 edge on the boards a game after Syracuse owned them in that stat category. UConn (17-4) has not won a game this season in which it has been outrebounded, falling to current top 10 teams UCLA, Texas and NC State.
“We didn’t get a chance to do too much, because it was a one-day turnaround,” Ivey said of her team recalibrating for the Huskies. “So, we did some stuff on the court, but a lot of film.
“I had a serious team meeting, and talked about the things we needed to do individually and things we needed to do as a team. Kind of put a mirror in their face, that we’ve got to get better.”
The Irish may have exceeded what was on the to-do list.
Senior forward Maddy Westbeld shot 6-for-7 in the second half with three 3s for 15 of her 23 points, after the Irish had rallied from 12 points down in the first half to lead 44-35 heading into the third quarter.
Reserve forward Nat Marshall followed up a scoreless nine minutes against Syracuse with 10 points off the bench on 4-of-5 shooting while logging 20 impactful minutes against UConn. And junior Sonia Citron contributed 15 points and six boards, and played smothering defense on UConn leading scorer Paige Bueckers.
Bueckers managed eight fourth-quarter points to finish with 17, but she was 5-for-17 from the field for the game. The 6-foot redshirt junior came in shooting 57 percent from the field and 54 percent for her career.
“That was the game plan. She’s their engine,” Ivey said of the former AP National Player of the Year and Wooden Award winner. “They have so many scorers around her. I thought Soni Citron did an incredible job on her.
“Tried to deny her the entire night. Just try to put a hand in her face. Paige is an amazing player. Always been a fan of hers. But just to see us hold her beneath her average, I thought it was a remarkable job by Soni.”
The rest of the Irish followed the theme. UConn came into the 54th-ever meeting between the two rivals as the nation’s second-best shooting team (.518) and third-best from 3 (.388), and managed .433 and .286, respectively against Notre Dame, including shooting 2-of-12 from the field and 0-for-2 from the arc in the fourth quarter when Hidalgo almost outscored the Huskies single-handedly.
“Hannah is just relentless. She’s a relentless player,” Ivey said. “What I love about her most is she plays with confidence. She’s very fearless. She just loves to compete.
“Her energy is contagious. I feel like she stepped on our campus and has really just shined. She's very comfortable in her own skin. ... I continue to be impressed by her growth, because she really is in the fire.”
Actually, at times on Saturday night, she was the fire.
UConn All-America senior forward Aaliyah Edwards provided that kind of impact for the Huskies for much of the game, finishing with a team-high 23 points and a game-high 11 rebounds. But in the decisive fourth quarter, she had one point and two boards and didn’t even attempt a field goal in10 minutes.
In the third quarter, though, she was 5-of-6 from the field for 10 points as UConn erased Notre Dame’s nine-point halftime advantage and led 57-54 late in the period before back-to-back 3s by Westbeld gave the Irish back the lead heading into the fourth quarter.
UConn pulled even, at 60-60, 54 seconds into the final period before Hidalgo touched off a decisive 8-0 run with a drive to the basket, with the Huskies never getting closer than five thereafter.
The Irish shot 55 percent for the game, the highest percentage any team has logged against Connecticut this season.
“We knew they were going to go on their runs,” Westbeld said, “and we just had to get on ours and stay poised and get through that.”
And now to build on that experience instead of letting it be an isolated high point.
“Connecticut, I just have so much respect for them and coach Geno [Auriemma],” Ivey said, “but I’m just so proud of my team. We’ve had a lot of ups and downs, a lot of injuries. Even KK [Bransford] went down for a little bit [with an ankle injury but returned]. But to see them battle, have the resiliency that they’ve shown and then just the toughness to stick together in such a hostile environment.
“Just a credit to my team showing up tonight and just battling and fighting.”
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