Niele Ivey flashed a wide smile on Notre Dame women’s basketball media day back in October when she admitted full-court pressure in waves was part of her design plan in the coming season to put her deep roster to its best use.
Seemingly deep roster.
With a steady diet of adversity, it’s been a constant reinvention ever since — sometimes within games themselves. And the best version showed up in the ACC Tournament Championship Game on Sunday in Greensboro, N.C., against a team that three weeks ago sent the fourth-seeded Irish on their most profound and successful soul-searching mission of a season full of them.
Down to seven healthy players Sunday, including former walk-on Sarah Cernugel, the Irish showed how far they’ve come since NC State’s humbling 59-43 of Notre Dame on Feb. 15 with a resilient and defensively opulent 55-51 takedown of the second-seeded Wolfpack (27-6) at Greensboro Coliseum.
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Notre Dame (26-6) closed with a 12-2 run and rolls into NCAA Tourney Selection Sunday on St, Patrick’s Day evening on an eight-game winning streak, with each of the last five against a ranked opponent.
And as a projected No. 3 regional seed, the Irish will get first- and second-round home games.
“Actually our last matchup with NC State I think shifted our team,” said Ivey, who Sunday hoisted the sixth ACC Tourney captured by Notre Dame since it joined the league in 2014 but the first since Hall-of-Fame coach Muffet McGraw’s last Final Four team did so in 2019.
“It shifted the culture, the atmosphere of that game,” Ivey continued. “We didn't play well at all. We kind of were off. We weren't really on the same page that game. So, just putting the mirror in our faces, we really kind of rallied together and just talked about what do we need to do better for us to finish out the season well?
“So, everybody individually gave more, sacrificed more, and committed more to our vision, and that's why we're in this position right now.”
And no one flipped the script from that first NC State game more than freshman Hannah Hidalgo, who took home ACC Tournament MVP honors.
After going 4-of-19 from the field and scoring a career-low 10 points against the Wolfpack, the 5-foot-6 freshman played all 40 minutes on Sunday, scored a game-high 22 points, including the go-ahead basket with 88 seconds left and the game-clinching free throw with 10 seconds remaining.
She also stuffed the stat sheet with six rebounds, six assists, two steals and zero turnovers against one of the best defensive teams in the nation.
“I learned to use my left [hand] a little more,” said Hidalgo, who was overplayed to her right defensively in both NC State games. “I noticed in the other game that they iced me and sent me to my left a lot. Watching film with coach Ivey and just realizing how I can score off of that.
“So, they sent me to my left, so what I did was I snaked it and I just had the big — just hold the screen for a little bit longer. I was able to snake in and get to my jump shot or kick out [to the] corner or get all the way to the basket.”
And when she did kick out, junior guard Sonia Citron and senior forward Maddy Westbeld were ready to cash in.
Citron scored Notre Dame’s first seven points of the game and finished with 11 to go along with eight rebounds and four steals. Westbeld scored 14 of her 16 points in the second half, including back-to-back 3s in the fourth quarter that rescued the Irish from their largest deficit of the game, 49-43, and ignited ND’s final 12-2 surge to close the game.
They each played 40 minutes as well.
Senior reserve forward Nat Marshall made her first college start Sunday in place of fellow senior Kylee Watson, who suffered a left knee injury in ND’s 82-53 flogging of top seed Virginia Tech in Saturday’s semis and who is set to undergo an MRI on Monday in South Bend.
Seldom-used reserve forward Becky Obinma was also unavailable Sunday, with her reason for joining perhaps the largest convalescing cheering section in college basketball being in concussion protocol.
The Irish made the most of the six players they did use, including Marshall who had two points, six rebounds and three blocks in 34 minutes, and never really dabbled with foul trouble. A sticky 2-3 zone got even more daunting for the Wolfpack in the fourth quarter, after they found some cracks in it behind 6-5 center River Baldwin to put up 21 third-quarter points and lead 43-41 heading into the final period.
ND got stronger on defense as the quarter unfolded, though, with the Wolfpack missing eight of their final nine shots from the field.
“I knew I was going to go to the zone early just to make sure that we stayed out of foul trouble,” Ivey said, “and I felt like River Baldwin was doing a great job of just getting a lot of seals.
“I was worried about foul trouble, so I sent a double-team, which really worked. We got a couple great traps from Soni, great traps from Hannah that resulted in a steal. And I thought that was a big difference in that shift defensively — just throwing something else at them.”
Offensively, the Irish were stellar from 3-point range for the second straight game (8-of-17), and got just enough from Hidalgo driving to the basket late against the nation’s No. 10 team in field-goal percentage defense.
But the Irish were the better defensive team Sunday when it mattered the most.
“Just give credit to Notre Dame,” NC State coach Wes Moore said. “We just struggled to score the ball. I thought the third quarter we did a better job of getting in attack mode and getting post touches, and then we just, again, I think we were 3-for-17 from 3 at some point against the zone. You'd like to knock down a couple more of those.
“But like I said, give them credit. I'm proud of our team for not only what they've done this week but overall on the year.”
NC State’s last missed 3 was launched by Aziaha James, with the Wolfpack down three after a Citron made free throw with 23 seconds left, Citron rebounded the James miss, and Hidalgo got the ball streaking down court and was fouled with 10.5 seconds left by Zoe Brooks.
She missed the first but knocked down the second, and Notre Dame started the celebration moments later.
And a deep reflection from Ivey, the first ACC coach of a team seeded fourth or lower to lead a team to the tourney title since Clemson in1999.
“I'm grateful that we had that shift,” Ivey said of the NC State loss in mid-February, “and I'm grateful that we got better. Every day just got better and better. But it's just a credit to our leaders, and it's a credit to everyone buying in.
“We needed that second layer of buy-in at the end of the season, because we knew we had a really tough stretch. So, I'm proud of our resilience and the way that we've battled since that loss.”
ACC WOMEN'S BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT
Results/Schedule
Wednesday Through Sunday at Greensboro, N.C.
Wednesday
#13 Boston College 85,. #12 Clemson 72
#10 Georgia Tech 73, #15 Pitt 60
#14 Wake Forest 58, #11 Virginia 55
Thursday
#5 Louisville 58, #13 Boston College 55
#9 Miami 60, #8 North Carolina 59
#7 Duke 70, #10 Georgia Tech 58
#6 Florida State 70, #14 Wake Forest 53
Friday
#4 Notre Dame 77, #5 Louisville 68
#1 Virginia Tech 55, #9 Miami 47
#2 NC State 54, #7 Duke 51
#6 Florida State 78, #3 Syracuse 65
Saturday
#4 Notre Dame 82, #1 Virginia Tech 53
#2 NC State 69, #6 Florida State 43
Sunday
Championship Game
#4 Notre Dame 55,. No. 2 NC State 51
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