What to make of Notre Dame women's basketball falling just short of Elite Eight with loss to NC State
It was taken away in a flash. Literally.
Notre Dame had the ball and the lead, a slim one-point advantage over NC State in Saturday’s Sweet 16 matchup in Bridgeport, Conn. Time ticked under 20 seconds. Senior guard Dara Mabrey dribbled with her left hand near mid-court then turned and spun back to her right, shielding the ball from Wolfpack defender Raina Perez as she surveyed the rest of the floor.
Or so she thought.
Perez picked her pocket. Clean, smooth, legal. A straight-up steal leading to an easy two points the other way.
Taken away. In a flash.
No. 5 seed Notre Dame lost to No. 1 seed NC State, 66-63, in a game the Irish led for nearly 32 minutes. The Wolfpack barely led for five. An NCAA Tournament run fueled with so much promise and power after knocking off UMass and Oklahoma by a combined 55 points stopped in its tracks at the hands of an ACC nemesis who exacted revenge. Notre Dame’s beat NC State on Feb. 1.
“I don’t want them to feel like this loss dictates who we are, because it doesn’t,” Notre Dame (24-9) head coach Niele Ivey said. “It’s hard, but it’s part of the game. There’s a winner, there’s a loser. But we can always learn from it, and so that’s what we’re going to do.”
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It’s even harder for the Irish because they were that close to being on the other end of the situation. Ivey’s team didn’t panic when NC State (32-3) held a four-point lead after the first quarter. The Irish outscored the Wolfpack by 12 in the second to take a somewhat commanding eight-point advantage into halftime.
At that point, those in blue and gold could reasonably start thinking about an Elite Eight appearance. Freshman point guard Olivia Miles had 15 first-half points, the Notre Dame defense held NC State below 40% shooting from the field, and the Irish just looked flat-out confident on the big stage. They had one of the top four teams in the country on the ropes.
But ACC Coach of the Year Wes Moore did not panic.
“I don’t think they’re going to keep that up for the entire game,” he told his team at halftime. “And we’ve got to make sure we’re ready when our opportunity comes to turn the tide.”
The Wolfpack were.
With Notre Dame still leading by seven entering the final frame, things started to shift heavily in NC State’s favor on a three-point play from Wolfpack senior guard Kai Crutchfield. The and-one opportunity cut Notre Dame’s lead to two, 53-51. The Irish responded with six straight points to regain breathing room, but the feeling was NC State wasn’t done making runs at the lead. And clearly, they weren’t. The Wolfpack just kept coming.
The Irish left the door open, too. Sixteen Notre Dame turnovers led to 22 NC State points.
“It was clear they needed stops and wanted to get stops, so they started pressuring us full court,” said Miles, who only had six second-half points to finish with a game-high 21. “I could have done a way better job of getting my team more organized. I was kind of quiet because I was trying to figure it out for myself, figure out the spots that I can go and get the ball up the floor.”
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It would have been the grandest of theaters for Notre Dame to put all of its fourth quarter fiascos to bed. The drubbing at UConn in December. The meltdown at Duke in January. Those losses were the result of poor performances in crunch time. The Irish even had some dicey wins in which they had to hold on in the fourth just to come away on top. NC State outscored Notre Dame 23-17 in the Irish’s victory in February, after all.
That didn’t come to fruition. NC State outscored Notre Dame 20-10 in the fourth Saturday.
“NC State did a great job making adjustments to pick us up full court, to pressure us,” Ivey said. “They double teamed [Miles]. They changed different things on her defensively off the ball screen.”
That’s coaching. Someone like Moore has done it enough times to know which strings to pull. This was only Ivey’s second season as a head coach. She has plenty of experience sitting alongside Muffet McGraw as a longtime Notre Dame assistant, but it’s different when the head coaching cap goes on.
Like her players, Ivey is going to learn from the loss. She’s going to take it on the chin and be better for it. All Notre Dame wanted to do in November was qualify for the NCAA Tournament. The Irish ended up being seconds away from winning three games in it. There is no shame in that. There is no shame in Mabrey’s turnover in the waning moments, either. Perez made a play. There are 40 minutes worth of plays in every ballgame.
“We reassured her that it wasn’t that play,” Miles said. “It was a buildup of plays. It wasn’t that one play. We could have put ourselves in a much better situation to be up four, up six, instead of up one.”
Those are the learning curves Notre Dame has to overcome before it can truly win high-stakes games regularly. There can’t be a cloud hanging over the team any time it takes a slight lead into the fourth quarter. Players can’t be thinking, “How can we hold on?” They have to be thinking, “How can we lock this down and leave little doubt?”
In a 44-point victory over Oklahoma in the second round, Notre Dame did that. The Irish did not let the Sooners come up for air on their own floor. It was 40 minutes of all-out basketball on both ends of the floor. Saturday was a different story. NC State put up more points in three of four quarters. Notre Dame might have been the better team for longer stretches, but what’s that mean when the scoreboard shows a deficit when it’s all over?
“As coaches, we always stress every possession matters,” Ivey said.
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It’s one thing to say it. It’s another to show it. That’ll be easier to do when this group comes back nearly in its entirety for the 2022-23 season. Miles will be another year wiser. Mabrey will be a super senior. Graduate student senior Maya Dodson could have a waiver approved granting her another year of eligibility. ACC Freshman of the Year Sonia Citron should take a huge leap as a sophomore. Maddy Westbeld should be better as a junior than she was this year as a sophomore.
The entire Notre Dame starting five could run it back next season. That’s a scary thought for the ACC considering this group, as inexperienced and low on scholarship depth numbers as it was, finished third in the regular season conference standings and made a run to the Sweet 16 — where it nearly knocked off a team that only lost to one ACC opponent all season for a second time.
Yeah, Notre Dame was the only ACC team to beat Moore’s Wolfpack this season. And it almost happened twice.
Ivey and company have nothing to hang their heads over.
“I’m excited to get back to work,” Ivey said. “Maybe I’ll take 24 hours off, and then I’m going to start watching film and get back to work because that’s what it is — this is a grind. I always talk about my mantra is never too high — don’t ever get too high on the wins — and don’t ever get too low on the losses.
“Obviously this one hurts. It’s going to hurt. But I know that I’m at an amazing university, I have an amazing staff. I have amazing support, and I have an amazing team. I’m just blessed and grateful that I get a chance to lead this group.”
A group that went from a 10-10 record and missing the NCAA Tournament last season to one that put the world on notice with a record-breaking Sweet 16 entrance.
A group that will almost assuredly be back.
