There came a point of inflection in the No. 3 Notre Dame women’s basketball team’s road test at Virginia Tech on Thursday night, when Hannah Hidalgo looked like she decided to just take over the game.
Which the Irish point guard did fairly convincingly during a coaching matchup of two former Notre Dame point guards. While inspiring her teammates. Especially Marquette grad transfer Liza Karlen.
Hidalgo, the nation’s second-leading scorer, produced 16 of her game-high 30 points in a third quarter that the Hokies collectively cobbled together 14, helping to turn a sloppy, uber-physical white-knuckler into a convincing 77-61 ACC victory for the Irish (18-2, 9-0).
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Notre Dame’s 13th straight win was just the sixth loss in the past 52 games at Cassell Coliseum for the defending regular-season ACC champs (14-7, 5-5), and created the first two-game losing streak this season for first-year head coach Megan Duffy.
“I think one thing about playing with Hannah is her energy is just contagious,” Karlen said. “And so if we can get one more person to get on that same energy level and then we bring in another person, now it's three players.
“If you can match her energy, it might not necessarily be ‘take the ball and score.’ It might be ‘get out of the way’ sometimes. But if you can match her intensity on the defensive level and help her as much as we can on the offensive end, we're going to be in a really, really good spot.”
Karlen’s contributions to that really good spot were significant. The 6-foot-2 forward came off the bench to score 12 points — her second-highest total in an Irish uniform — on 5-for-5 shooting from the field, including two 3s.
She had also collected five rebounds and two steals, and didn’t commit a turnover in her 24 minutes of playing time on a night when the Irish racked up 19 of them as a team.
And she did it playing against the coach, in Duffy, who mentored her at Marquette the past four seasons until both moved on this past offseason.
“I don't know about the 3s,” Karlen responded when asked if that was something Duffy taught her, “but she definitely taught me how to play hard. And I think that's something that you see from this team, from Virginia Tech, is that they played extremely hard all 40 minutes.
“They came out, right off the bat, just swinging. And so I think that there's a lot of respect there. She's a great coach, and they're gonna be a really good team.”
The Hokies actually were a handful early on Thursday night, leading by as many as seven in the first quarter and as deep into the game as late second quarter, when a Hidalgo steal and score tied the game at 30-30 and touched off an 8-0 Irish burst that gave ND the lead for good.
Karlen had four points in that run. And then she canned a big 3-pointer midway through the fourth quarter after Virginia Tech had knocked a lopsided Irish lead down to 10.
“That was big,” Irish coach Niele Ivey said of Karlen’s trey. “I mean, that's the first thing I talked about in the locker room. Our offense kind of got stagnant, and late in the shot clock, big 3.
“She was left alone. I think Liv [Olivia Miles] found her up top. It’s something that she works on all the time. She is a gym rat, and it was just nice to see her come out here and be perfect from the field.”
Ivey, incidentally, had exhausted her eligibility just before Duffy enrolled at Notre Dame in 2002 and also played for Hall-of-Fame coach Muffet McGraw.
Miles, ND’s other current point guard, contributed 15 points and four assists against a Virginia Tech team that now trails in the series 2-18 and has lost seven straight to the Irish. And Miles and Hidalgo frustrated Hokies leading scorer Carleigh Wenzel into a 1-of-8 shooting night for five points.
Wenzel struggled on the defensive end as well, fouling out after having logged just 17 minutes of court time. Carys Baker led Virginia Tech with 17 points.
As a team, Notre Dame came in No. 4 nationally in field goal shooting, and shot 51% from the field, just above their season mark of 49.7%. And the Irish shot 43% from the 3-point arc, kust above their nation’s-leading 41.2% clip.
Hidalgo had three of Notre Dame’s nine 3s, and she was 10-of-16 from the field overall and 7-for-7 at the free-throw line. Her 30 points are roughly five above her average, three of her season high and five off her career high.
“I mean, she's just an Energizer bunny,” Ivey said of Hidalgo, “so she's never going to stop. She's always going to play hard. Did a great job. I think that her energy defensively — she got a couple steals, got a couple of and-ones. And I think that's just her game.
“You know, she's dynamic, and she loves a battle. And no matter what the scenario, what the situation, she's going to fight. So, I thought she just really turned it on in the second half.”
The Irish continue life on the road on Sunday at Louisville (15-6, 8-2) in a noon EST matchup on ESPN2, before hosting a pair of ACC newbies next week, in Stanford (next Thursday night) and 19th-ranked Cal (on Feb. 9).
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