Notre Dame women’s basketball: Three things to know about Oklahoma for NCAA Tournament second round
This is March. It doesn’t get any easier as you go.
Notre Dame needed one of its best offensive outputs of the season to handle an upstart UMass team in the first round of the NCAA Tournament on Saturday. The Fighting Irish exploded early and got going again late to defeat the Minutewomen 89-78. Next up: a team as capable as any nationally at putting the ball in the bucket.
No. 4 seed Oklahoma took down No. 13 seed IUPU 78-72 on Saturday. Here are three things to know about the Sooners before Monday’s second-round game tips off at the Lloyd Noble Center in Norman, Okla., at 6 p.m. ET.
Oklahoma has the No. 3 offense in the country
The Sooners (25-8) score 83.3 points per game. Only DePaul and Iowa score more.
Oklahoma has not hit that mark in any of its last six games, though. The Sooners have lost twice in that span. Still, Oklahoma’s offense cannot be taken lightly. There are three guards on the roster — Madi Williams, Ana Llanusa and Taylor Robertson — who average at least 17 points per game. Notre Dame won’t have to worry about one of them. Llanusa suffered a season-ending injury way back in December.
Williams and Robertson combined for 43 points against IUPU. The former had 21. The latter had 22. Notre Dame has to key in on each of those guards on every possession. Like Sam Breen against the Irish in the first round, Williams and Robertson are both capable of taking a game into their own hands. A more talented roster overall with two elite scorers makes Oklahoma a matchup nightmare for anybody — especially a Notre Dame team that plays zone for four quarters.
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Taylor Robertson can shoot the long ball
Robertson might be the best three-point shooter in the country.
No player in America has made more than Robertson’s 117 threes. She also ranks fifth nationally in three-point shooting percentage (45.0%). The ability to connect at that high of a rate having attempted the fourth most threes of any player in women’s college basketball is staggering. For reference, Stephen Curry is a career 42.8% three-point shooter. Robertson, a senior, is a career 44.2% three-point assassin.
Notre Dame’s defensive Achilles heel this season has been allowing teams to get hot from beyond the arc. With Robertson leading the charge, Oklahoma can get as hot as anybody. The Irish let two players, Breen and Sydney Taylor, combine to make seven threes Saturday. If they’re not careful, Robertson can make that many on her own. She has hit that mark in one game three times this season. She’s reached five or more 10 times but has not done so since Feb. 5.
The Sooners are big-game hunters
Only one conference with at least two participants in the NCAA Tournament had an undefeated record through the first round: The Big 12. Oklahoma finished fourth in that loaded league. The Sooners also played as well as anyone in the conference for large stretches of the season.
Oklahoma owns two victories over No. 2 seed Baylor and a win over No. 2 seed Texas. When the Sooners are on, they can play with — and beat — anybody. It’s been a bit since that has been the case, though. The most recent of those victories over the respective No. 2 seeds came on Feb. 2. Oklahoma has a 6-5 record since then, including Saturday’s first-round triumph.
Oklahoma isn’t exactly peaking at the right time. The same can be said for Notre Dame, who went into the tournament with a 4-4 record in its last eight games. Monday’s matchup will be about which team can channel the elite play that allowed the Sooners to topple two of the Big 12’s best and allowed the Irish to get the best of the ACC’s top team, NC State, on Feb. 1.
