Notre Dame outlasts Kent State to advance to NCAA Tournament second round

A sold-out crowd at Purcell Pavilion probably wasn’t expecting No. 2 seed Notre Dame to take a “slow things down” timeout in the fourth quarter of Saturday’s matchup against No. 15 seed Kent State, a 30-point underdog per Athlon Sports, but that’s exactly what Irish head coach Niele Ivey did.

And it worked.

Leading by a dozen midway through the final frame, Ivey signaled to the refs she wanted a 30-second break after back-to-back Golden Flashes 3-point makes. Notre Dame came out of the TO with a 3 of its own off the hands of junior guard Sonia Citron. The Irish scored seven of the game’s next nine points after that to register a 10-2 run.

Kent State wasn’t coming back from down 20. Not with less than four minutes remaining. Notre Dame won, 81-67, to advance to the second round of the NCAA Tournament Monday against either No. 7 seed Ole Miss or No. 10 seed Marquette.

Notre Dame had 24 assists on 35 made baskets. Might as well make Ivey’s late timeout the 25th.

“They were gaining momentum from our defensive lapses,” Ivey said. “We turned the ball over multiple possessions. I wanted to regroup with the team and talk about what we needed to do defensively. We also settled for a lot of outside jumpers, so we didn’t get a chance to get downhill or get paint touches. So that’s what I talked about.”

“We knew it was our mistakes, that we were doing it to ourselves,” Citron added. “We had to clean it up, lock in and stay poised.”

It was quite often the good with the bad for Notre Dame on Saturday. ACC Rookie of the Year Hannah Hidalgo coughed up what’s commonly referred to as a “wedgie” — when the ball gets wedged between the backboard and rim — in the first half. that’s not an endearing endeavor for a high-level basketball player, especially one who’s the star player on a high seed with national championship aspirations.

Fear not.

Hidalgo splashed a 3 from roughly the same spot on her very next shot attempt. She had more dynamite moments in the second half, mostly as an assister. She had a career-high 11 helpers to go along with 14 points and 6 steals — a couple of them that made roughly 9,000 jaws drop to the floor — in her NCAA Tournament debut.

“My teammates were doing a great job of getting open, and I was able to find them and they were able to hit shots,” Hidalgo said. “It’s just a matter of them knocking down shots if they get the ball. They did.”

As dazzling as Hidalgo was at times, Citron was the star of the show. She’s been here before. She averaged 14 points per game in her first six tournament appearances, three as a freshman and three as a sophomore. The first one of her junior season was the 6’1″ sharpshooter’s best.

Citron poured in a career tournament-high 29 points on 13-of-20 shooting.

“My teammates were finding me, and I was getting in good positions to shoot,” Citron said. “I was knocking them down and getting a lot of points in transition.”

Notre Dame had twice as many turnovers in the second half (6) as it did in the first (3). The Irish also committed 17 fouls. Hidalgo, senior forward Maddy Westbeld and senior center Nat Marshall all finished with four apiece. That affected how the Irish played defense, and it got in their heads a bit offensively as well. They won the second half 49-30. They lost the second 37-32.

Individual performances like those put forth by Citron and Hidalgo, and even the 12 points chipped in by graduate student guard Anna DeWolfe, playing in her first NCAA Tournament game in her five-year career, could be enough to knock off the Rebels or Golden Eagles. More than 9 points on 4-of-13 shooting from Westbeld and another 18-0 run like the one the Irish used to go up 22-5 in the first quarter would help too.

But Monday’s result will ultimately come down to Notre Dame playing better defense. Locking in on that end of the floor the way the Irish did in the eight-game winning streak that birthed the opportunity to play two tournament games in South Bend. Not fouling. Not hoping the referees are on their side no matter what like thousands inside the arena were when things got a little dicey.

Notre Dame can control the way things go in that regard. So that’s what the Irish must do if they’re to keep playing in March.