If the Notre Dame women’s basketball team is going to find a higher gear as it chases double-bye status in next month’s ACC Tournament and home court in the NCAA Tourney after that, the 19th-ranked Irish may have provided a glimpse of it Monday night at Duke.
Now if they can only bottle it and replicate it. Consistently.
Sophomore guard KK Bransford and senior forward Nat Marshall, the only two reserves Irish head coach Niele Ivey regularly deploys, shook off a quiet first half from each to help the Irish land a TKO in the third quarter, then close out the host Blue Devils in the fourth, 70-62, at Cameron Indoor Stadium in Durham, N.C.
And it didn’t hurt that point guard Hannah Hidalgo’s experience of hitting the proverbial freshman wall lasted all of one game.
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The nation’s third-leading scorer followed up her career-low 10 point performance and 4-of-19 shooting in Thursday night’s 59-43 collective cratering against NC State with a more typical Hidalgo stat-stuffing performance that keeps her percolating in the first-team All-American discussion as well as re-editing the ND and ACC record books.
Twenty-three points — on 7-of-16 shooting from the field — six rebounds, four assists and four steals. Already the ACC’s all-time leader for steals as a freshman, she’s climbed to No. 3 on the ACC all-time freshman scoring chart, with No. 1 well within reach.
More importantly Hidalgo, with a more balanced surrounding cast Monday night, keeps the Irish (19-6, 9-5 ACC) alive for a possible No. 4 seed in both the ACC and NCAA Tourneys. The Irish are in a standings scrum with eight teams fighting for status in both, with even lower-division Miami projected into the NCAA field at the moment as a ninth ACC team.
As far as the latest NCAA Tournament bracketology from ESPN, Notre Dame is projected as a 5 seed, with the top four seeds in each region getting to play first-and-second round games at home.
“I’m really proud of this team,” Ivey said after the Irish broke a three-game series losing streak to Duke. “Hannah made big plays down the stretch. Came up with some incredible steals. Her energy defensively really ignited us. She’s just been phenomenal all season, and I just thought she had an extremely solid game tonight.
“Took great shots. Shot with confidence, and did a great job of distributing and just running the team. We had a lot of balance tonight. The offense looked a lot better, and [I] just want to continue to grow from this.”
They did their best growing on Monday night during a 14-0 third-quarter run.
In it the Irish finally broke away from making the Duke matchup look like a rerun of the NC State loss and held the Blue Devils (16-9, 8-6) to their lowest third-quarter scoring output of the season (nine points).
Bransford had six of her eight points during the surge, including the basket that gave ND the lead for good. Four other Irish players scored during the burst, with Marshall capping the run that gave the Irish a 48-37 command late in the quarter.
“KK is a worker,” Ivey said of Bransford, who also contributed three rebounds, three assists and two steals, almost all of which came in the second half.
“She does whatever we need. Sometimes I have her run the point. Sometimes she’s at the 4. I try to find opportunities to post her up. I thought she did a great job on defense and making plays in transition.
She's really smart, very high IQ, works hard and does whatever we need. In the second half, she got herself going. … One of her best games. I felt like she played with a sense of urgency, and was extremely determined tonight.”
So was Marshall, who finished with six points, three rebounds and two blocked shots.
“I thought it was just a really good lineup, so I wanted to stick with that,” Ivey said of Marshall, who was coming off back-to-back scoreless performances and who played 21 minutes Monday, her most court time in a game since late December.
“I thought she was really active. I thought she did a good job of finishing around the rim. I thought defensively she really used her length, was really active on the boards.”
Monday marked just the second time this season Duke's bench got outscored by another team's reserves (14-10).
Senior Maddy Westbeld just missed a double-double with 14 points and nine rebounds. Junior Sonia Citron added 12 points and four steals.
The Irish shot 59.3% in the second half to finish at 48.1 percent for the game. That’s only the third time this season the Blue Devils have allowed a team to shoot 48% or better, with Clemson and No. 1 South Carolina the other two teams to accomplish that.
Notre Dame was able to turn good defense into offense, forcing 21 turnovers and racking up 18 fastbreak points. No team had scored more than 14 of those against Duke this season, and the last four Duke opponents, which included ACC leader and eighth-ranked Virginia Tech, combined for 12 fastbreak points.
Notre Dame faces two teams in the lower part of the league standings later this week with Clemson (11-15, 4-10) visiting Purcell Pavilion on Thursday and then the Irish traveling to Boston College (11-16, 3-11) on Sunday.
The Irish then close the regular season with home games against Virginia Tech (22-4, 13-2) and Louisville (21-6, 10-4).
“Both NC State and Duke are great defensive teams,” Ivey said. “And so, we learned a lot from that game, went back to work this weekend to get better to fix our offense. Then just following the game plan with that.
“There was a lot of spacing. I thought we shot the ball really well. And when you set great screens and space the floor, good things happen. But again, we learned a lot from last Thursday and got back to work. We’re blessed to have another opportunity to get better. That’s what we did.”
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