Notre Dame PG Hannah Hidalgo wins another weekly national award
The national honors keep rolling in for Notre Dame point guard Hannah Hidalgo. The Fighting Irish’s star freshman was named the USBWA Tamika Catchings National Freshman of the Week on Tuesday.
Hidalgo’s most recent honor goes with her ACC Rookie of the Week and Naismith Women’s College Player of the Week nods. She scored 34 points and had 10 rebounds and 6 assists against then-No. 8 UConn in an 82-67 win for the Irish in Storrs, Conn. When you beat the Huskies on the road and do it in dominant fashion, the college basketball world takes notice.
Hidalgo has been playing at a high level all year. She’s averaging 25.4 points, 5.9 assists, 5.8 rebounds and 5.1 steals per game. She’s the only player in the country averaging 20-plus points and 5-plus rebounds, assists and steals per game. That’s because she’s the only player in the nation with 5 or more steals per game.
She trails only Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, USC’s JuJu Watkins and Buffalo’s Chellia Watson in points per game. There’s a case to be made that Hidalgo is the best two-way player in the game. Nobody else does what she does on both ends of the floor.
Hidalgo might ride her incredible run all the way to a national freshman of the year award at the end of the season, but she’s going to have to get through Watkins to claim it. Scoring is generally what captures the attention of voters, and Watson has hit 30-plus points six times. Hidalgo has hit it three times, which is a program record for a Notre Dame freshman. All of her 30-point games have come against ranked opponents.
Even if Hidalgo does not win national freshman of the year, she could take the torch from Clark as the face of women’s college basketball as soon as next season. It’s a show every single time Clark steps onto the court. When she’s gone, it won’t take spectators long to see it’s the same way with Hidalgo.
Hidalgo has scored 20-plus points in 17 of Notre Dame’s 19 games. She’s a walking bucket, like Clark, in addition to her tone-setting defensive style. She’s on pace to break Notre Dame’s single-season scoring average record of 21.8 set by Arike Ogunbowale in 2018-19. She’s also only 17 steals away from tying Skylar Diggins for the most ever by an Irish player in a single season.
