Maryland finds Notre Dame's pressure point, ends Irish season in Sweet 16
The unraveling felt inevitable — not because of a lack of fortitude, but because Niele Ivey had run out of ways to reinvent her diluted Notre Dame women’s basketball team.
Double-digit seeds Southern Utah and Mississippi State had the formula to attack the point guard-less third-seeded Irish in the NCAA’s first two rounds, but lacked the personnel and perhaps the resolve to overcome ND’s wall of resilience.
Saturday at Bon Secours Wellness Arena in Greenville, S.C., the third-seeded Irish finally ran into a team that lacked none of that. It just took second-seeded Maryland until the middle of the third quarter to put it all together in a 76-59 bittersweet Sweet 16 dismissal of Notre Dame.
“I honestly think we did it to ourselves, just too many turnovers,” said sophomore de facto point guard Sonia Citron, who committed four of Notre Dame’s season-high 25 miscues to go along with her team-high 14 points and seven rebounds.
“We didn't take care of the ball. And I think we let Maryland speed us up, and we kind of just went rogue. That's on us. We didn't really play with the discipline we should have, and we didn't take care of the ball.”
The Irish (27-6) couldn’t keep their size advantage on the floor either, as 6-foot-4 Lauren Ebo, 6-4 Kylee Watson and 6-3 Maddy Westbeld had to sit long stretches of the second half because of foul trouble, with Ebo and Westfeld eventually fouling out.
A 13-1 Maryland burst to end the third quarter encapsulated all the Irish woes in one catastrophic stretch and broke a 44-44 tie and any sense of rhythm in Notre Dame’s offense. Down 57-45 to start the fourth quarter, the Notre Dame committed turnovers on its first two possessions to defuse any realistic scenario for a comeback, sending the Terrapins (28-6) into an Elite 8 matchup Monday night against No. 1-ranked and defending national champion South Carolina (35-0).
Injured All-American Olivia Miles, Notre Dame’s Plan A at the point, on the Irish bench consoled a sobbing grad senior Dara Mabrey, ND’s Plan B at that position and prolific 3-point shooter, in the game’s final minutes. Mabrey’s ND season and career had ended with a torn ACL on Jan. 22.
Ivey had an optimistic timeline, though, for Miles’ still undisclosed right knee injury that truncated her season in ND’s regular-season finale on Feb. 26.
“They're looking at dates for next week for her surgery,” Ivey said. “So, after surgery, obviously, it depends on healing, rehab and all that stuff. I expect her probably to rejoin us when we come back this summer.”
Summer term at Notre Dame starts June 12.
That’s also when the top-ranked senior point guard in the high school ranks, 5-7 McDonald’s All-American Hannah Hidalgo, joins the Irish roster along with one of the nation’s most accurate prep 3-point shooters (45% on 256 attempts this past season), 6-2 McDonald’s All-American Emma Risch.
“We're going to come back a stronger, better team because of this,” Ivey said of the largely wobbly NCAA Tourney three-game run.
To her credit, Ivey wasn’t looking for silver linings. Ever since Miles went down, her plan was to make the ensuing games building blocks for next year’s run, when the team could have Final Four potential if it can pluck a quality post player out of the transfer portal to replace Ebo.
“This team has faced so much adversity,” Citron said in support of Ivey’s point. “I never thought I'd be playing the point. I'm sure Maddy never thought she'd be basically a 2 or a 3 guard.
“But I think through all of that, we learned so much. So I think you can look on the positive side, and next year we will all just have so much more experience because of the situations we were put in.”
Perhaps no one personifies that more than 17-year-old Cass Prosper, who was still in high school in Canada on Dec. 1, when the Irish lost a heartbreaker, 74-72, in South Bend to Maryland on a last-second shot by All-American Diamond Miller.
The 17-year-old early enrollee, who debuted on Dec. 29 against Elite 8 qualifier Miami, logged a career-high 36 minutes in ND’s most consequential game of the year and committed a career-high five turnovers.
But she had nine points to go along with that, and six rebounds, an assist, two blocked shots and some impressive defense early on Miller, who didn’t score from the field until 77 seconds remained in the first half.
Miller, who had 31 points in the first Maryland-ND matchup, heated up late to finish with 18 and shared game-high honors with All-Big Ten sophomore guard Shyanne Sellers, the daughter of former NBA forward Brad Sellers.
“She got a ton of great experience playing in this type of game, playing in a first and second round NCAA game and a Sweet 16 game,” Ivey said of Prosper, a 6-2 guard with an expansive wingspan.
“It's invaluable the things she learned on the fly, and she's a sponge. She soaked up everything. She had to take on a lot to really kind of adjust to college life, being a 17-year-old, and also me. I asked her to come in and guard one of the best players in the country.
“It's going to help her down the road. It's going to help her throughout her career, having this experience, being on the big stage. She's a big-time player, and she wants to be on the big stage.
“This is really going to help her down the road and help our program.”
Ebo and Mabrey are the only two Irish players with expiring eligibility. But the transfer portal is the great unknown and the great equalizer. Last season, Notre Dame lost four players off a Sweet 16 team to transferring, and most found the increased playing time they were looking for. But none of them — Katlyn Gilbert, Sam Brunelle, Anaya Peoples, and Abby Prohaska — were dancing in March.
Miller pointed out how much the portal took from last year’s Maryland team — including LSU All-America center Angel Reese (who took a transfer recruiting visit to ND) — and how much transfer additions contributed to this Terrapin squad, and how Miller processed it all.
“If I were to transfer, I would have played with a new group of girls,” she said. “And if I stayed, I would have played with a new group of girls. You know, when you look at it like that, I was like, ‘I'm just going to stay and trust the process.’
“And I'm so happy I did, because I don't know what school I would have committed to, but would we be at the Elite 8 now? I don't know. But here we are.”
The dance is over for Notre Dame. But the building for the season ahead is already in progress.
“It never feels good when you go through a game like this,” Ivey said, “but what I am encouraged by is that I have a very — a sophomore/junior-(heavy team) coming back. My core is strong, and I'm looking forward to what Notre Dame women's basketball is going to look like in the future.”
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