SOUTH BEND — Big wins have been the backbone of the Notre Dame women’s basketball program for the better part of two decades.
Big wins in the regular season against opponents with intimidating numbers next to its names. Big wins on winter nights in the Big East and Atlantic Coast conferences. Big wins in league tournaments that ended with the Irish wearing hats and T-shirts and cutting down nets.
Advertisement
Big wins in the NCAA tournament and the Final Four. Two especially come to mind — in 2001 and 2018 — have big white and gold and blue national championship banners that hang from Purcell Pavilion’s west rafters.
Big wins are common for this program, but you would be hard-pressed to tap into that memory bank early Friday evening after an electric/entertaining atmosphere and find a more important win in recent seasons for No. 23 Notre Dame women’s basketball (4-1) with what happened at home in a 61-59 win over No. 11 USC.
“This is a big win for us; this is a big win for our confidence and what we’re building,” coach Niele Ivey said. “I would definitely rank it as a super-high, top 10 (win), but it’s important because it’s this group, and this group is special.”
Important especially given what happened over the previous five days around the Irish program. On the practice court. In the film room. During quiet times elsewhere on campus when the players had too much time to sit and wonder how everything went so wrong last week against No. 9 Michigan in a game that ended in a 39-point loss.
Advertisement
That wasn’t Notre Dame women’s basketball, said Ivey, who has been around long enough as a player and an assistant and now the head coach to know. That wasn’t Notre Dame basketball said a roster core who know well what it’s like to rip off 19-straight wins and be ranked No. 1 for weeks, stuff that they helped last year’s team do.
Whatever that was against Michigan, the coach and the staff and the players decided during the week that that had to stop. No repeat of it in the next game or the next week or the next month. Whatever Friday might become in terms of a win or a loss, it was more important, maybe most important, for Notre Dame women’s basketball to look like it should look.
“We didn’t play well,” Ivey said of the disaster in Detroit. “We didn’t show up that game. It wasn’t us. You learn and you respond and you move on.”
And if All-American guard Hannah Hidalgo wants to turn the place upside down with a last-second drive and jumper from the right of the key with 1.9 seconds remaining to win it, well, we’ll take that too. We took it, and so did the Irish, who stormed back from an 11-point deficit in the second half for a win in a grinder of a game that featured nine ties and eight lead changes.
Advertisement
“This is the moment that we were waiting for,” said senior KK Bransford.
Waiting for and then delivering. There were times when it looked like an early season game. There were times when it looked — and felt — like a postseason game. Especially that end. Didn’t see this one coming from that Irish team.
Maybe we should have. It’s in the DNA.
Hidalgo and what she did to ensure there would be no overtime will receive most of the attention, but we’ve seen it plenty from the junior — meeting the moment. When USC left the door open by missing a pair of point-blank layups in the closing 57 seconds, you knew where the ball was going. You knew who was taking the shot. You kind of knew how it would end.
Advertisement
If the ball’s in Hidalgo’s hands in a late-game situation, she’s going to take the shot. She’s going to make the shot. She’s not going to stress over those seconds about to expire — even though the staff will. She’s going to do what she does.
“I saw that it was about five seconds left,” Hidalgo said, “and just went downhill.”
This one was more than Hidalgo doing what Hidalgo does. It was Bransford shrugging off seven turnovers to play her best when her best was needed. She had nine points, five rebounds and one turnover in all 10 fourth-quarter minutes.
Advertisement
“I didn’t want to leave anything out on the court,” Bransford said of that burst. “Just telling myself you don’t have time to feel sorry for yourself. There’s 10 minutes left. Just give it my all.”
It was guard Vanessa de Jesus, in her first taste of a big-game atmosphere as a member of Notre Dame playing with a calm, experienced, old player’s pace to deliver 13 points and four assists. And then, after Hidalgo’s shot had blown the roof off the old building, it was Cass Prosper defending and deflecting USC’s inbound pass to steal it/seal it.
The Irish did everything Friday that it didn’t do against Michigan. They defended. They competed. They believed.
“I can’t say enough about this team,” Ivey said. “I am so proud of the way we responded coming off a really tough loss. They just stayed the course. Really found that toughness that I know we have.”
Advertisement
Give Hidalgo that last-second shot love but give this Notre Dame team credit. It could have folded. It probably should have folded when down 11. It didn’t fold. It fought and found something that they can carry forward.
That’s why this one was so important. There will be more challenges as Notre Dame ventures deeper through the regular season. There will be wins and losses and wonders and worries, but when it all seems too much, Notre Dame can look back on that Friday night in late November. At home. Against USC.
If the Irish could find a way to figure it out on this night, they can find their way through the rest of the nonconference schedule. They can find their way through ACC play. They might even find their way back to March.
That’s why this big win was such an important win. A program that has won a lot and won a lot in March doesn’t need to put that much stock in a November nonconference home game.
Advertisement
This one will.
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 Indianapolis Star: Notre Dame women’s basketball score today vs USC, Hannah Hidalgo, KK Bransford
