Notre Dame wins at James Madison with first different starting lineup of the season

For the first time this season, Niele Ivey had make adjustments to her starting lineup when Notre Dame took on James Madison on the road Sunday.

No matter. The Fighting Irish rolled.

Playing without starting guard KK Bransford, who injured her knee three days prior, Notre Dame jumped on the Dukes early and stayed in front all afternoon in a 78-65 wire-to-wire victory. The No. 19 Irish improved to 8-2 and now have just one game over the next two weeks before the resumption of conference play vs. Pitt on Dec. 29.

“I thought we came out rallying for KK,” Ivey said. “I thought we came out with great energy defensively, offensively. Great team win.”

Ivey went in a different direction with her starting five than some might’ve predicted. Bransford is a 5-11 guard, but it wasn’t 5-8 Iyana Moore who slid up into her spot. Ivey instead put 6-4 center Malaya Cowles on the floor first to present a bigger lineup alongside front court mate Gisela Sanchez, who’s also 6-4.

It probably didn’t go how Ivey envisioned. Not at first, at least.

Cowles didn’t score in the first quarter. She acquired two personal fouls in the first five minutes. Moore quickly came off the bench, and she made an impact. She popped two first-quarter threes.

The break on the bench boded well for Cowles, meanwhile, who gathered herself and really got it going with a final line of 17 points, 5 steals and 4 rebounds. She scored multiple key buckets in the fourth quarter to keep a healthy distance between Notre Dame and the comeback-minded home team.

“I’m so proud of her,” Ivey said in a postgame on-court interview with ESPN+. “She brings a different energy. She brings a different presence for us. She’s very smart defensively. She has great size. Did a great job of finishing. So she was big for us.”

For the third game in a row, though, the Notre Dame player not named Hannah Hidalgo who did the most damage for Ivey and the Irish was Cassandre Prosper. Coming off two 20-plus point performances in Notre Dame’s prior two games, Prosper scored a game-high 24 vs. JMU. She also had 6 rebounds and 3 assists.

In Notre Dame’s last loss a week and a half ago at Ole Miss, Prosper had 2 points, 4 rebounds and an assist. The Irish are a different team when she’s more productive, especially when playing without Bransford, who’s good for nearly 10 points and 5 rebounds per game in addition to many things involving hustle that do not show up on a stat sheet.

“She did so many things,” Ivey said of Prosper at JMU. “Her defense, her rebounding, her activity. She’s just getting better and better every game.”

Notre Dame definitely goes as Hidalgo goes, though, and she was effective enough for the Irish to hold the Dukes off for two hours. She didn’t shoot the ball well from the field, going 2 of 10, but she was aggressive in drawing fouls and finished 8 of 10 from the free throw line. Hidalgo had 13 points, 6 rebounds, 4 assists and 4 steals.

Notre Dame had 15 steals as a team, scoring 21 points off JMU turnovers. The Dukes only scored 4 points off 9 Irish turnovers.

James Madison cut a Notre Dame lead that was as large as 20 down to nine early in the fourth quarter, but the deficit proved too large to come back from entirely. Ivey called a timeout, Cowles got a bucket coming out of it, and the Irish held on.

They’re next in action a week from today, Dec. 21, against Bellarmine at 5 p.m. ET at Purcell Pavilion.