SOUTH BEND ― You don’t have to wander Rolfs Hall long to realize that much about Notre Dame women’s basketball is different.
Don’t climb the steps to the second-floor conference room where the coaches huddle to formulate plans for the 2025-26 season. Don’t venture to the lower-level practice court or weight room where the grind is daily. Don’t peek into the main-floor locker room/lounge where “Hi My Name Is…” tags were mandatory in summer.
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All it takes to realize that this is a different season, a different team, a different outlook is to linger in the lobby. Watch the video highlight montage from last season playing on an endless loop along a TV wall.
That player making that layup? She’s gone. That player grabbing that rebound? She’s gone too. Making the blocked shot? The steal? Leading the celebration? Gone, gone, gone. One player still present and featured prominently is all-everything guard Hannah Hidalgo. She may go and get 30 points a game this season, and it might not be good enough.
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This could be a rough ride.
If last October felt like a master class in women’s basketball, this October feels like Basketball 101. Start with the basics. Start from the bottom. Start over. New faces in new places. Old faces in new roles. A new resolve. A new vibe.
Last October, head coach Niele Ivey and her staff could run practice on autopilot. With veteran players who had played a ton of college basketball, their jobs often were easy in some ways, hard in others. It was a group that knew who it was and knew where it wanted to go, though it never got there.
There’s already been a lot of teaching. A lot of film work. A lot of stopping practices to teach and preach. A lot of reminders offered that the standard of Notre Dame women’s basketball is the standard. It must be met. Some days, it is. Others, it’s not.
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On this day in mid-October, there was slippage during a two-player defensive drill. Ivey pressed pause to address a few issues. A four-letter word was even used. Then it was back to work. Message sent.
“It’s almost like we have five new faces,” said Ivey, who may face her greatest coaching challenge this season. “It is a lot of teaching, a lot of new terminology getting the group acclimated to the system.”
The last time we saw junior guard KK Bransford in uniform in the spring of 2024, Notre Dame was going 28-7 and winning the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament with a veteran core. The last time Bransford was on the Irish bench ― she redshirted last season because of injury ― Notre Dame was ripping through 19 straight wins, was ranked No. 1 and had designs of breezing to the program’s 10th Final Four.
Bransford’s back, but so few others are on a team with seven newcomers, including six transfers. That can be equally intimidating and intriguing. Bransford and fellow returnees Hidalgo and Cass Prosper can put their prints on a program that has basically known nothing but sustained success for so many seasons.
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“It gives us the opportunity to make what we want with this team,” Bransford said. “A big theme is a blank canvas. Offensively, defensively, finding our identity has been fun this offseason.”
Fun this offseason after not a lot of fun late last season when everything started to crumble and no amount of talent (a ton) and togetherness (not enough) could keep it from collapsing. Notre Dame was ranked No. 1 as late as late February, but the double overtime loss at North Carolina State marked the beginning of a stunning end.
Notre Dame lost four of its final eight. It lost to Duke in the league tournament semifinals. It lost to TCU in the Sweet 16. It lost eight players off the roster, some to the WNBA, some to the transfer portal. It was all so unexpected and unfamiliar for a program that had been built on stability.
Even now, so many months and a complete roster overhaul later, we’re not exactly sure what happened and why it happened. Debate it and discuss it all you want, but we’re done wondering about last season. That’s in the rearview. For everyone. It’s time to let it go.
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“I’m taking ownership of everything,” Ivey said. “The highs and lows, I’m responsible for. It was disappointing the way that we ended the season. I’ve taken those experiences, the lessons. It’s helped me grow.”
And move forward. This season is new and different and has its own avalanches of challenges and expectations. The standard being the standard, that won’t change. Notre Dame expects to compete. Notre Dame expects to win.
It just won’t happen to the level it did when last season was rolling. If the Final Four was that year’s ceiling, this year’s is just getting back to the NCAA Tournament. Winning enough to host the first and second rounds? With this roster? That would be something.
“We had a target on our back (last year); this year, we’re probably going to be under the radar,” Ivey said. “That doesn’t matter to us. It never matters who we are outside of our locker room.”
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Notre Dame will compete. It will scrap. It will believe. The want-to may not match the can-do.
Winters around these parts can be cruel. This one might be.
Bundle up.
Follow South Bend Tribune and NDInsider columnist Tom Noie on X (formerly Twitter): @tnoieNDI. Contact Noie at tnoie@sbtinfo.com
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Can Notre Dame women’s basketball’s rebuilt roster meet the standard?
