Notre Dame women’s basketball wanted to close out its road victory at Wake Forest with defense.
Even though the No. 19 Irish led by 12 points at halftime, the Demon Deacons made 51.9% percent of their shots from the field. So head coach Niele Ivey set a goal for her team: hold Wake Forest to 22 points in the second half.
The Irish fell one point short of that goal, but they still managed to cruise to a 75-56 win to complete a successful two-game road trip to Virginia and Wake Forest.
“Our identity is on defense, getting the ball out, rebounding and going,” said Notre Dame senior forward Maddy Westbeld. “We can’t get into our flow offensively unless we do that. That’s really something the coaches were emphasizing and also us on the floor.”
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Notre Dame (14-3, 5-2 ACC) held Wake Forest (4-15, 0-7) nearly four points below its scoring average for the season (59.7), which is the lowest in the ACC. The Irish limited Wake Forest to 8-of-27 (29.6%) shooting in the second half.
The kind of defensive effort should have opened the door for an even bigger blowout victory for the Irish, but they hurt themselves with 10 turnovers in a 12-point third quarter. Ivey said she stressed the importance of protecting possessions after Virginia managed to cut a 17-point Notre Dame lead to six points in the fourth quarter in Thursday’s 10-point Irish victory. The Irish committed seven turnovers in that quarter.
Notre Dame committed one more turnover Sunday (16) than it did in Thursday’s win.
“I really want to do a better job of taking care of the ball,” Ivey said. “That’s always one of our keys to win. We had 19 assists, but we want to have that turnover margin a little bit lower than what it is.”
All seven Notre Dame players who saw the court Sunday contributed to those 19 assists with the three starting guards — Hannah Hidalgo, Sonia Citron and Anna DeWolfe — contributing four apiece. But five players — excluding Citron (one turnover) and forward Natalija Marshall (zero) — committed at least two turnovers.
The Irish need to clean up those miscues, but the emphasis on ball movement has been clear.
“Even last game, too, that really translated for us,” said Westbeld, who scored 10 points with a game-high nine rebounds. “Getting Sonia back, getting our core group back, like Coach has been saying, we’re getting our flow back. We have our chemistry. We have everything. It’s rolling. We’re feeling really good on the offensive end.”
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Westbeld committed a team-high four turnovers and added two assists. She managed to record one more steal (four) than defensive menace Hidalgo.
Hidalgo scored a game-high 21 points with four rebounds and four assists in 34 minutes. Citron added 18 points with four rebounds and four assists in 35 minutes. She shot 50% (4-of-8) from 3, made both of her two-point attempts and made both of her free throws.
Sophomore guard KK Bransford provided all 10 of Notre Dame’s bench points in 25 minutes.
“Just collectively, it was a great team effort,” Ivey said. “Everyone did a great job of sharing the ball. We shot the ball really well from 3.”
Notre Dame’s 10 3-pointers on 18 attempts are the most it’s made against a major conference team this season. The Irish entered Sunday averaging 5.4 made 3s per game.
After putting together a four-game conference winning streak, Notre Dame will be tested next week. The Irish host shared ACC leader Syracuse (16-2, 6-1) on Thursday (7 p.m. EST on ACC Network Extra) before hitting the road to play nonconference rival UConn on Saturday (8 p.m. on FOX). The No. 9 Huskies (16-3) have won 12 games in a row since a Dec. 3 loss at Texas.
“Really proud of this group,” Ivey said, “and excited to get back home for a home contest on Thursday.”
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