SOUTH BEND, Ind. — The real beauty in the 17th-ranked Notre Dame women’s basketball touching its ceiling and then breaking through it Thursday night at Purcell Pavilion is the expectation from within that there’s still higher ground for this team.
“It was just a magical night for us,” ND head coach Niele Ivey said after the Irish took out the soon-to-be anointed ACC regular-season champ and a team vying for a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, fifth-ranked, Virginia Tech, by a 71-58 count.
“I want us to play like this all the time.”
Just maybe they can. And they’ll need to.
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Notre Dame (22-6, 11-5 ACC) put itself in position to clinch the fourth seed and final spot that earns a double-bye in next week’s ACC Tournament in Greensboro, N.C. if it can subdue 22nd-ranked Louisville (23-7, 12-5) Sunday in the regular-season finale at home (2 p.m. EST; ESPN).
For the Irish to grab the 3 seed, mathematically possible, it would require 12th-ranked NC State (24-5, 12-5) to lose to a 6-23 Wake Forest team on Sunday.
A sweep this week and a respectable showing in the ACC Tourney probably would be enough to land the Irish first- and second-round home games in the upcoming NCAA Tournament by virtue of a No. 4 seed or better.
“What I know about this team is we have so much talent and we've learned a lot with our losses,” Ivey said. “This team is growing and maturing every time you see them. Every night we're trying to get better. And so, I feel like everything that we've gone through this season has led us up to this moment.”
And they seized it right from the opening tip against Virginia Tech (23-5, 14-3) after falling behind by double digits in the first quarters of five of their previous six games.
They pushed pace and tempo and flexed their transition game on both ends, with an 18-2 command in fastbreak points. They outrebounded (43-29) and outshot (45% to 37%) a team not used to getting outdone in either stat category.
And the Irish man-to-man defense was a tour de force, smothering two-time ACC Player of the Year (and likely in line for a third) 6-foot-6 Elizabeth Kitley (12 points, roughly half her average) and forcing Hokies star guard Georgia Amoore into a 7-of-24 shooting night.
“I thought they had a really good game plan,” said Virginia Tech coach Kenny Brooks, whose Hokies saw their 10-game winning streak come to an end. “They were extremely physical with us. And we didn't answer the bell.
“I thought we were playing on our heels for most of the night. They sped us up to where we really couldn't get into what we wanted to get to. And then we had to play from behind for the majority of the night.”
Freshman point guard Hannah Hidalgo lit the fire on offense and defense and never let it come close to flickering out, with jer relentless ball pressure on defense and daring drives on offense.
The nation’s third-leading scorer — and now the ACC record holder in points for a freshman — finished with 23 points, six assists, three steals and a game-high 12 rebounds, three more than Kitley, who leads the ACC and was sixth nationally coming in (11.6).
“I mean, my teammates and my coaches always tell me that it kind of starts with me,” Hidalgo said. “And so my teammates, they really feed off my defense. We knew that we needed to have better starts, so I knew they had to start with me. I knew that I had to pick up and pressure, and just stay locked in.”
And keep pushing the pace, with which Virginia Tech never found a comfort zone.
An amped-up crowd of 6,416 watched the two teams trade haymakers in the first quarter, with the Irish emerging 18-17. They then pushed their advantage to eight at halftime and scored the first six points of the third quarter.
Virginia Tech, though, made its runs — knocking the lead down to four — with 3:20 left in the third quarter and surging to within five, 59-54, on a jumper by Amore with 3:36 left in the game.
But the Irish always had an answer. And often those answers came in transition.
“I feel like this team, when we push pace, we’re at our best,” Ivey said. “And I wanted to put a lot of pressure on Virginia Tech. I stress pace — pace in the half court, pace in the full court. And I think that's where our identity lies, with our speed, our ability to have shooters around the floor.
“All of our guards can get downhill, and we have shooters that can space the floor. So, that's always been the focus all season, but definitely tonight. That was a big emphasis, to push pace.”
Maddy Westbeld, who played all 40 minutes and took the majority of the turns defending Kitley, lit up the Hokies for 19 points to go along with 10 rebounds.
Sonia Citron bounced back from a scoreless first half to score 21 in the second. She actually outscored the Hokies by herself in the fourth quarter, 12-11.
“Mentally, I just tried to stay in the game,” Citron said, “and honestly think that my energy in the second half came from my teammates. The whole team was playing so great in the first half. And while I didn't contribute as much as I would have liked, I just stayed positive, and the energy coming from Hannah, from Maddy and the other players kind of just kept me in a positive mindset.
“I knew that it was all going to work out in the end, like my shot’s going to come, My game is going to come to me if I just stay positive and keep doing like the little things on defense and things like that.”
Little things. Big things. All things. Former Irish star Jewell Loyd picked the right night to come back and watch her former team in action.
And maybe there will be more of those to come?
“I feel like when you're on a stage like this playing against a team like Virginia Tech, it shows them what type of team we can be,” Ivey said. “So, we just have to stay consistent with that.”
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