How Olivia Miles led Notre Dame women’s basketball to upset win over No. 3 UConn

It was the kind of game Notre Dame head coach Niele Ivey had to take the microphone after. Normally, the Fighting Irish exit the court immediately following the final buzzer. Not Sunday.

Sunday wasn’t normal.

Ivey and her players hung around the interlocking “ND” logo at mid-court inside Purcell Pavilion while majority of Notre Dame fans hung around their seats. Not in them. Over them. It wasn’t a time to sit. Their No. 7 Irish (7-1) just knocked off No. 3 UConn, 74-60.

There were 9,149 of them there to take it all in.

“Irish fans,” Ivey said. “I just have to tell you, I am so proud of this group. Thank you for showing up today. This was a sellout. It was the first time for me as head coach to see almost every seat filled. Thank you. I just want you guys to know, this is why I came back. For that group to do what it did today, we need your support. We’re going to be back, you already know it. So thank you.”

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The first quarter contained three lead changes and four ties. It was as back-and-forth as basketball gets, and basketball, of course, is the ultimate back-and-forth game. Then the player of the day, and perhaps the point guard on her way to putting herself in the player of the year mix, took over.

Sophomore Olivia Miles used a screen at the top of the key to hit a long-range jumper to knot the game at 13-13. She knifed through two UConn (6-1) defenders on a coast-to-coast, left-handed layup to give the Irish a 15-13 advantage. She made a hard cut to her right, through three Huskies, to find wide-open graduate student sharpshooter Dara Mabrey in the corner.

Bingo.

That all occurred in the final 90 seconds of the first frame. Notre Dame led 18-13 through 10 minutes and never looked back. The Irish led by as many as 18 during the second quarter and held a 17-point halftime edge. UConn battled back in the second half, as Ivey knew the third-ranked, previously unbeaten team would, to cut the deficit back down to five.

But in the end, Miles was too much.

She finished with 21 points, 8 rebounds and 4 assists. Every time Notre Dame needed a bucket, she either delivered it herself or created one for her teammates. It was a Miles illegal contact foul that gave UConn two free throws to tighten the game at 49-44 midway through the third quarter. She shook it off and connected on a layup to make the score 55-44 and then assisted on another basket to make it 57-46.

More Miles, less problems.

“Like all really, really good guards, I think she senses the tempo of the game,” UConn head coach Geno Auriemma said. “She kind of dictates where she wants the ball to go, and there is very little that you can do. There are only so many things you can prepare defensively.

“OK, let’s see if we can take away this. Let’s see if we can take away that. But for every little thing you take away, she finds — and obviously you need a supporting cast — but she finds whoever it is that you left open to help compensate for her. She did a great job today of not just getting her own shot but distributing to her teammates who made big shots too.”

Miles ended up a few ticks below her season average of 6.7 assists per game, though, because she was the aggressor early. Her assertiveness didn’t start when she felt the Irish needed to finish the first quarter in strong fashion.

It started from the opening tip.

She scored the game’s first bucket. She tallied Notre Dame’s next five points thereafter, too, and 13 of the Irish’s 18 first-frame total. Miles knew Notre Dame lost its previous game on the same floor because it failed to make winning plays down the stretch. But she also knew that against an opponent like mighty UConn, she had to make things happen early so that the Irish would be there in the end.

Mission accomplished.

“I felt pretty timid in the Maryland game,” said Miles, who had 14 points and 7 assists in a 74-72 defeat to the Terrapins. “I was in my head a little. So the focus this game was to just be aggressive and play my game.”

Like Auriemma said, she received help from others in white and green jerseys. Junior forward Maddy Westbeld had a season-high 17 points. She knocked down 3-of-5 shots from long range. Graduate student center Lauren Ebo scored 12 points off the bench. She was a steadying presence in the post despite looking a little shaky in her early minutes.

Notre Dame outmuscled UConn. The Irish finished with a 39-26 edge in total rebounds and a wide 46-16 margin in points in the paint. The Huskies lost leading scorer Azzi Fudd, a sophomore guard who went into the game averaging 24.0 points per game, to an injured knee in the first half. She did not score a single point in 13 laboring minutes. The Huskies have been without 6-5 forward Dorka Juhász for five games now, too.

For much of the game, UConn only went six players deep in its rotation. Notre Dame wore the Huskies’ limited roster down. Ivey was fearful Fudd’s absence would light a fire under her teammates. Auriemma felt it had the opposite effect.

“It puts people in a tough spot because it dons on them, ‘I have to make the shots we normally would get for somebody else,'” Auriemma said. “‘I have to score more points.’ It’s daunting on the road against a really good team.”

Key words: good team. Notre Dame has one. It showed as much Sunday even without Fudd in the fold.

“It’s kind of scary what we can do when we play really well,” Miles said. “And you see what happens when we play really well.”