There were seemingly shocking stretches of fragility on Friday for the second-seeded Notre Dame women’s basketball team, the defending ACC Tournament champs.
Closer to reality, its 2025 tourney debut in the quarterfinals, against a 7-seeded Cal team that the Irish annihilated by 39 a month ago, was probably more like the latest example of a team playing like it still has some unrealized potential incubating.
And yet is running out of time to push that to the forefront.
Sixth-ranked Notre Dame got enough of its peak performance, though, at First Horizon Coliseum in Greensboro, N.C., to rally from a six-point, third-quarter deficit and survive and advance with a 73-64 victory.
More Content
► Notre Dame football details injury updates for 2025 spring roster
► Rivals doesn't hate Notre Dame football recruits
► How WR Beaux Collins grew in lone season with Notre Dame football
► Chat Transcript: Is Notre Dame getting a recruiting bump from deep CFP run?
► How Mike Martin's vision for Notre Dame football aligns with Marcus Freeman
The Irish (26-4) get 3 seed Duke (24-7) in Saturday’s second semifinal at 2:30 p.m. EST (ESPN2). Top-seed NC State (25-5), a one-point quarterfinal survivor over 9 seed Georgia Tech, faces 5 seed North Carolina (27-6) in a noon semi.
Saturday’s survivors will meet at 1 p.m. EDT Sunday for the championship at First Horizon Coliseum.
Newly anointed ACC Player of the Year and ACC Defensive Player of the Year Hannah Hidalgo was a catalyst offensive and defensively, scoring a game-high 25 points, while helping to coax Cal (25-8) into committing 28 turnovers, including 19 in the first half.
“It starts with Hannah on defense, her disruptive energy,” backcourt mate Olivia Miles offered. “She brings chaos for the other team. Very glad she's on our team and not the other. She causes a lot of [disruption], and it's on us at the back to kind of make up for those steals, those deflections that she has.
“Yeah, when you have someone that's pressuring the ball for 40 minutes, it makes it a little easier on us to be disruptive as well.”
Notre Dame’s early and persistent shooting woes were disruptive to its own offense, though Miles found her touch late to finish with 14 points, seven of which came during a 14-1 Irish run late in the third quarter to put Notre Dame in the lead for good.
She also had a game-high six assists as well as four rebounds and three steals. And combined with Hidalgo, the pair combined for one turnover in 73 minutes of court time between them.
“I mean, it's tough when you're missing two, three in a row,” said Miles, who was 4-of-14 from the field for the game after an 0-for-6 first half, “but that's the beauty of basketball.
“You have to have short-term memory, and our teammates are so good at — you know, KK [Bransford] came over to me and was like, ‘You can get to the rim whenever you want.’ That kind of flipped a switch in my brain, like oh. Sometimes you can get so far in your head.”
More subtle among the contributors, at least tangibly, was freshman center Kate Koval. The Ukraine native came off the bench to chip in four points and three rebounds. But her bigger impact was on defense, altering shots and accruing a blocked shot and two steals.
“I'll talk about Kate and Liza [Karlin] coming in off the bench today,” ND coach Niele Ivey said. “They were really great with their post defense, really changed the game defensively.”
Cal offset its turnover-a-palooza early by shooting 50% from the field in the first half, and nearly that well from the 3-point arc (5-of-11). And the Bears heated up again with a 14-3 surge to lead 45-39 midway through the period when Ivey called timeout.
A Koval bucket moments later started ND’s emphatic 14-1 answer.
“I was trying to cut the momentum and just kind of recenter, refocus,” Ivey said of the timeout. “Talk about our defense, knowing we needed to get stops. And with those stops, coming down on the floor and getting better shots and getting to the rim.
“We talked about getting downhill. We ran a couple actions that were very successful, so kind of went back to that.”
Cal had one more spurt in it and the Bears were able to knock the Irish lead down to three early in the fourth quarter, 59-56. But Koval, Sonia Citron and Maddy Westbeld hit consecutive buckets and the Irish were able to breathe easier in the final moments.
Lulu Twidale led the Bears with 16 points, including four 3s, but she also committed six turnovers.
Cal, though, collectively has been playing good basketball since its lopsided 91-52 loss to the Irish on Feb. 9 in South Bend. The Bears, in fact, went 6-1 between the two ND matchups. And Cal has two wins on its résumé this season against teams that beat the Irish — Florida State and NC State.
“Honestly, I think they [the Irish] embarrassed us in the first game,” Cal coach Charmin Smith said. “We have pride, and we wanted to come back and show we're a better team. And I think we did that, in my opinion.
“Hopefully, people could see in this game how good we are and stop putting us on an 8/9 line [in NCAA Tourney projections] and not giving us the respect that we deserve for beating teams like NC State and Florida State and being in this conference and traveling four trips across the country when no one else was doing that but Stanford.
“I think it's crazy where our NET stands and where we are relative to other people who haven't had to do what we have done. That's why we wanted to come out here and compete today, to try to get off the 8/9 line to show that we belong and we can play with the top teams in the country. Notre Dame is definitely a top team in the country.
“It would have been more convincing had we won, but I think we made a statement, and I hope that people were able to see how good we are.”
In Duke, the Irish on Saturday will square off against a team they bludgeoned in South Bend on Feb. 17, eight days after they throttled Cal. Duke lost its very next game, against Louisville (70-62), then ripped off double-digits victories over Syracuse, North Carolina and Florida State before avening the Louisville loss on Friday night in the final ACC quarterfinal of the day.
“I think the stakes are high,” Ivey said. “Everybody's going to get their best game, understanding that this is it. You lose, you're going home. You have to be ready to perform for 40 minutes, and it's crazy. It's March.”
ACC WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT
(All Times Eastern)
At Greensboro, N.C.
FIRST ROUND
Wednesday
No. 12 Boston College 76, No. 13 Syracuse 73
No. 10 Virginia 64, No. 15 Pittsburgh 50
No. 14 Clemson 63, No. 11 Stanford 46
SECOND ROUND
Thursday
No. 5 North Carolina 78, No. 12 Boston College 71
No. 9 Georgia Tech 72, No. 8 Virginia Tech 57
No. 7 Cal 75, No. 10 Virginia 58
No. 6 Louisville 70, No. 14 Clemson 68 (OT)
QUARTERFINALS
Friday
No. 5 North Carolina 60, No. 4 Florida State 56
No. 1 NC State 73, No. 9 Georgia Tech 72
No. 2 Notre Dame 73, No. 7 Cal 64
No. 3 Duke 61, No. 6 Louisville 48
SEMIFINALS
Saturday
No. 5 North Carolina (27-6) vs. No. 1 NC State (25-5), Noon (ESPN2)
No. 2 Notre Dame (26-4) vs. No. 3 Duke (24-7), 2:30 p.m. (ESPN2)
CHAMPIONSHIP
Sunday
Semifinal winners, 1 p.m. (ESPN)
• Talk with Notre Dame fans on The Insider Lounge.
• Subscribe to the Inside ND Sports podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, Podbean or Pocket Casts.
• Subscribe to the Inside ND Sports channel on YouTube.
• Follow us on Twitter: @insideNDsports, @EHansenND and @TJamesND.
• Like us on Facebook: Inside ND Sports
• Follow us on Instagram: @insideNDsports
