SOUTH BEND, Ind. — The unmistakable blemishes on second-seeded Notre Dame’s 81-67 first-round NCAA Tournament victory on Saturday over 15 seed Kent State could also be interpreted as a template for future Irish tourney opponents.
Which is why Irish coach Niele Ivey, while pumped with an enthused sell-out crowd that included former Irish All-American Brianna Turner as well as ND’s ability to advance into the second round of women's basketball’s March Madness on Monday back at Purcell, wasn't quick to dismiss them.
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Janae Taylor, a 6-1 freshman forward, helped coax early and persistent foul trouble on Irish starting center Nat Marshall and forward Maddy Westbeld. The shorter Golden Flashes (21-11} also outrebounded the second-seeded Irish, 37-32, and had an effective plan to limit All-America point guard Hannah Hidalgo’s scoring ... for a while.
“I think one of the biggest things was we just wanted to make sure we were extended to the ball,” Kent State coach Todd Starkey said. “For the last three days we've just been yelling in practice, ‘To the ball, to the ball, to the ball.’ If you give her space to operate, man, she's just so explosive and so dangerous.
“We knew that we didn't have a chance in this game if she got 25, 30 points, because what that means is then she's able to get points AND distribute. She affects the game in so many different ways. We just wanted to make her shots difficult, really crowd her.
“We also wanted to try and attack her and get her in a little bit of foul trouble. They had a little bit of foul trouble. We didn't get quite to the point we wanted to, but man, she's a tough matchup. So, once again, our defensive game plan on her was good, but it backfired in that Citron had just an unbelievable shooting day.”
Junior Sonia Citron is the biggest reason the Irish (27-6) will be facing 7 seed Ole Miss (24-8) on Monday at 2 p.m. EDT (ESPN) without having suffered serious duress on Saturday. But the Irish weren’t able to maintain the curb-stomping pace they forged in the first half, either, in racing to a 49-30 lead at the break.
Citron finished with 29 points, tying a career high, on 13-of-20 shooting. Hidalgo heated up in the second half, when the Irish needed her most, to finish with 14 points, a career-high 11 assists and six steals.
Fordham grad transfer guard Anna DeWolfe chipped in 12 points, on 5-of-7 shooting, in her first-ever NCAA Tournament game.
“That was the biggest reason why I transferred,” DeWolfe said. “When I got on my first call with coach Ivey, she said to me, like, ‘This is what you want. This is where you need to come.’ She said to me that if you come here, we're going to win a championship. The ACC Tournament was definitely super special, but being here in March Madness is even more special.”
The Irish made it through round 1 for the 25th time in their 29 all-time NCAA appearances. Ole Miss profiles as one of the weakest 3-point shooting teams in Division I and least prolific. But the Rebels, who fended off 10 seed Marquette — 67-55 — in Saturday’s second game, have size in abundance and are consistent in their ability to get opposing teams in foul trouble.
“Coach talks a lot about adjusting to the refs,” DeWolfe said. “I think we struggled a little bit with that today, myself included. I think just adjusting to what the refs are calling, it's really important for us, especially down the stretch.
Added Ivey, “We've been in this environment or had this experience before, so I'm hoping that that was the worst of it. But like A.D. said, you have to adjust. And I didn't think that we adjusted in a timely manner.
“I thought we fouled and had some defensive lapses that put us in a bad situation with foul trouble. Hopefully, that was a lesson for us, and then we could do better on Monday.”
It began to affect Notre Dame on the offensive end in the third quarter Saturday, with substitution patterns not for game rhythm but to dodge additional foul trouble. Notre Dame scored just 10 points in the third quarter, while the Golden Flashes put up 16.
“I think we were just getting stagnant,” Citron said. “I think we were settling for outside shots.”
The teams essentially played to a standoff in the fourth quarter, with Kent State never able to knock the deficit under 12 points.
“We tried to make it interesting down the stretch,” Starkey said. “And that was our goal to let everyone know, win or lose in this game, that Kent State was here and that we compete and we play together.”
So do the Irish, though with limited roster numbers due to injuries — a core rotation of six players and two emergency options in Pepperdine transfer forward Becky Obinma and guard Sarah Cernugel, a former walk-on.
Obinma got pressed into action on Saturday when the game was far from decided.
“I would like to thank South Bend with this sold-out crowd,”Ivey summarized. “Energy was amazing. We had the most student tickets in our student section of our program's history, so I was really excited for that.
“And just excited to see the buzz that's here in South Bend because of women's basketball and obviously our program. It was a little ugly, I felt like, defensively. [But] we found a way.”
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