SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Sonia Citron was finally back on Sunday.
Thirty-seven minutes worth back after a 7½-week, nine-game absence, and with a sleeve/brace on her right leg seemingly the size of a small country.
The 6-foot-1 All-ACC junior guard survived a hard collision and a scrum, which knocked her to the Purcell Pavilion floor, and two cramping calves in the final minutes of 16th-ranked Notre Dame’s late fade that resulted in a 61-57 loss to unranked but surging North Carolina.
The latest unraveling included a 4-of-18 shooting performance by the Irish (10-3, 1-2) in the fourth quarter on a night when they fired a season-low 31% for the game, and the largest run by an opposing team — 15 points — that gained traction at the end of the third quarter and in the fourth exposed new flaws for ND head coach Niele Ivey to fix.
While some familiar ones lingered.
After laboring for 71 points Thursday against a defensively challenged Pitt team, the 57 points scored Sunday were a season-low for the Irish, who came in as the nation’s No. 10 scoring team at 87.4 points per game.
Notre Dame was outrebounded for the third straight game, this time 47-40 and with North Carolina holding a 16-9 command in the decisive fourth quarter.
A new missing piece, concussed senior forward Maddy Westbeld (14.7 ppg, 9.4 rpg), also figured into an outcome in which the Irish showed plenty of pluck, but not near enough precision. Having taken a blow to the face in a Thursday night escape at heavy underdog Pitt, Westbeld had her streak of 98 games played and 98 starts since the start of her freshman year come to a halt.
Her status moving forward was termed by Ivey as “day to day.”
“Every game, we’re trying to grow, we're trying to get better,” said Ivey, who had eight healthy scholarship players available and five unavailable due to injury, and ended up rotating just six. “The numbers, for me, do not matter. … Every available player, I'm just trying to get them ready. Obviously, we want to win games, so that’s what we’re going to try to do.”
Citron showed, in her first game back, that she can be a big part of the eventual solution, despite very limited practice time leading up to her return from a knee sprain. After a tentative start, she ended up scoring a game-high 18 points, with three of ND’s five made 3-pointers, and collecting seven rebounds.
“Well Sonia’s been here three years. She knows my system,” Ivey said. “She knows what I want. She knows she has the green light. She knows her spots. She gets to her spots. So, I don't think that's challenging at all, integrating her within the offense.
“What she brings outside of her poise and her competitiveness is her ability to play multiple positions. So, it was something that we were looking at, trying to get her going. And also, she could run the point as far as getting her shots.
“When you have an experienced player like her that has been in these moments, played in these types of games, I thought it was a seamless transition for her today.”
And Notre Dame was trending toward giving it some storybook context after allowing a 14-0 first-half run to the Tar Heels (11-4, 3-0) and trailing by as many as 12.
When Citron hit a 3 with 1:46 left in the third quarter, the Irish not only had erased the entire deficit, they led 46-39 with an impressive defensive surge of their own.
That’s when North Carolina coach Courtney Banghart slapped a 1-2-2 zone on the Irish, extending it into the backcourt and disrupting ND’s offensive flow.
“We turned the ball over with the press,” Ivey said. “They were kind of unforced — something we walked through, we talked about, we practiced a little bit. But I thought that 1-2-2 press … that was a momentum booster for them.”
Notre Dame still had its chance even after the Tar Heels’ extended surge. North Carolina’s Deja Kelly was called for an “unobserved flagrant foul” with 3:41 left. Citron made both free throws to tie the game at 55.
The Irish got the ball, too, but Anna DeWolfe’s 3-point attempt was off the mark, and Stanford transfer Indya Nivar collected the rebound as part of her dominating the final minutes of the game.
She finished with 16 points, roughly 10 more than her season average, as well as five rebounds and five steals while playing the final 9:45 of the game with four fouls. She also helped tame Notre Dame freshman guard Hannah Hidalgo — as much as that’s possible — though the nation’s third-leading scorer (24.5 ppg) managed to score 17 on 6-of-16 shooting from the field, and added a team-high 11 rebounds.
The Irish got very little offensive production from the two healthy bigs who did play — forwards Kylee Watson and Nat Marshall — who combined for three points and eight rebounds in 51 minutes.
“I’m the type of coach that feels like there's a lot of lessons that you've learned from games like this,” said Ivey, whose team next takes on Boston College (9-7, 1-2) at home on Thursday night (7 EST; ACC Network Extra). “We're going to go back, watch the film, work on that. But again, [I’m] just encouraged that I'm getting a little bit healthier.”
The Irish remain without guards Olivia Miles, Jenna Brown and Cass Prosper with no set timetable for a return, and freshman Emma Risch done for the season after hip surgery last week.
Citron’s return surprised Banghart and the Tar Heels, who adjusted their gameplan on the fly.
“It's great to be back,” Citron said. “The past seven weeks have been pretty tough. I've never had any injuries, so it's definitely something different. And just the rehabbing every day, it's really difficult, but I'm proud of myself for putting in all the work that I did to get me back in this position.
“The first quarter was definitely an adjustment for me, but [I] definitely got more and more comfortable, because I was really nervous before the game, just playing for the first time in a while. So yeah, I think I'm good to go now. Just got to get rid of the cramps.”
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