What to know about Notre Dame vs. Louisville in ACC Tournament
Lights, camera, Louisville. Take three. For the third time this season, Notre Dame will face the Louisville Cardinals in women’s basketball. In round three of the rivalry, a spot in the ACC Tournament semifinals is on the line for the No. 4 seed Irish and No. 5 seed Cards.
This is everything you need to know about the matchup.
No. 14 Notre Dame women’s basketball vs. No. 24 Louisville game info
- Teams: No. 14 Notre Dame (23-6, 13-5 ACC) and No. 24 Louisville (24-8, 12-6)
- Head coaches: Niele Ivey (84-31, fourth year at Notre Dame); Jeff Walz (464-133, 17th year at Louisville)
- Date: March 8, 2024
- Location: Greensboro Coliseum (Greensboro, N.C.)
- Time: 11 a.m. ET
- Television: ACC Network
- TV broadcasters: Pam Ward and Kelly Gramlich
- Radio: 99.9 WQLQ-FM in South Bend
- Radio broadcaster: Sean Stires and Karen Keyes
Matchup notables
• No. 5 seed Louisville had to come from behind to beat No. 13 seed Boston College on Wednesday. The Eagles were winning 55-52 with less than two minutes left. Then the Cardinals’ defense took over and willed them to the quarterfinals. “Overall we’ve got to play a lot better tomorrow if we want any chance of moving on in this tournament,” Louisville head coach Jeff Walz said after his team’s narrow win over a program that went 5-13 in league play this year.
• More Walz, when asked about facing Notre Dame: “I haven’t even really thought about tomorrow’s game. I’m going to go to the bar first and have some Tito’s and tonic and a few other things. And then hopefully it will make this game look a lot better when I watch it on film, blurry possibly. Then I’ll start worrying about Notre Dame for tomorrow night.”
• Just as the Cards were when they went to South Bend earlier this week, they’re on a streak of winning one game and losing the next dating all the way back to Feb. 1 vs. Syracuse. Louisville won that game and started a flip-flopping streak of one win, one loss ever since. The Cardinals are 6-5 since the first of February. If the pattern holds, they’re due for another loss to Notre Dame.
• More important than the general quirkiness of the last month for Louisville, though, is the Cardinals’ overall inconsistencies that have led to it. They do not have a true No. 1 star player like they’ve had in the past, and they struggle to maintain a rhythm throughout the course of 40-minute games. Nobody can just flat-out take over when things go south. They let it snowball. Notre Dame needs to take advantage of such instances, like when Louisville missed 14 shots in a row in Sunday’s third quarter. “It’s just trying to get our ball club to understand the urgency of every single possession,” Walz said.
• Louisville won the first meeting in the season series 73-66. Notre Dame returned the favor with an even easier 74-58 victory this past Sunday. The Irish have not been as hot and cold as the Cardinals of late; they’ve just been hot. Niele Ivey‘s team is riding a five-game winning streak into tournament play with each of the last two wins coming over ranked opponents.
• Ivey on meeting Louisville again: “The film is so fresh that it could be a good thing or a bad thing. They know you too well. But for us, we’re going to use it to our advantage. There are some things I still want to work on, but just having that mindset fresh, working on the things we just prepared for on Sunday is going to be very helpful for Friday.”
• Louisville beat Notre Dame in the ACC Tournament last year in the Irish’s second full game without Olivia Miles. They seemed to be running on empty then, but they’ve grown accustomed to a seven-player rotation this season. Notre Dame should be the fresher team having not played since Sunday, too.
• Winner takes on either No. 1 seed Virginia Tech or No. 9 seed Miami in the semifinals at noon ET Saturday.
