Notre Dame WBB set to resurrect rivalry with Purdue
A significant, but dormant Notre Dame women’s basketball rivalry will get a new life this season.
Purdue is back on the Irish schedule after a seven-season absence, it was announced Tuesday, with the two teams set to meet Dec. 17 at Purcell Pavilion on the Notre Dame campus. It’s actually the first regular-season meeting in 11 years, since the most recent clash, an 86-82 ND win in overtime, came during the 2017 NCAA Tournament.
The teams are set to meet next season as well, at Purdue, on a date to be determined. The Boilermakers lead the series 14-13, with the Irish having won the last eight meetings in a row.
The series started in the 1984-85 season, and the Boilermakers ran off six successive wins to start the series. Former Purdue coach Lin Dunn, who transformed Purdue into a national power in the late ’80s and into the ’90s remarked ahead of a game with the Irish how she admired then-ND coach Muffet McGraw’s aggressive scheduling, “but at some point she needs to start winning some of those.”
In a game McGraw said “changed everything”, that actually came to pass in the 1996 NCAA Tournament in Lubbock, Texas, when a 12th-seeded Irish team upended 5-seed Purdue in the tourney’s first round.
The next year, a sixth-seeded Irish team with the same core of players, crashed the Final Four for the first time. Four years after that, Notre Dame defeated Purdue 68-66 in the NCAA championship game in St. Louis, with current Irish coach Niele Ivey playing point guard for ND.
The Irish went 27-6 last season, winning the ACC regular-season title outright (15-3) and reaching the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament. Purdue, in coach Katie Gearlds’ first season, went 17-15 overall and finished ninth in the Big Ten with a 7-11 mark. The Boilermakers reached the second round of the WNIT.
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