SOUTH BEND – What the heck has happened?
Better yet, how the heck has this happened?
Five days prior to Thursday, the No. 4 Notre Dame women’s basketball team was a runaway locomotive gathering added speed and even more confidence, headed toward a season that only a select few could fathom.
What was on the table for the Irish? What was right there for the taking? What wasn’t? A program built on Final Fours seemed destined for another one. At the least.
The Irish were ranked No. 1 in the country for the first time in six seasons.
The Irish had ripped off 19 consecutive wins and hadn’t lost since Thanksgiving weekend. They weren’t just beating teams; they were pummeling them by 20 and 30 and 40 and even 50 points. They were machine-like in every way possible.
The Irish were really good and chasing greatness.
They were competitively cruel and oblivious to outside noise. Nothing fazed them. Nothing mattered but wins. At home. On the road. In conference. Out of conference. Against ranked teams. Against also-rans. The rebounded. They defended. They scored. They won.
Notre Dame had the makings of something special. It had that look.
The Irish had the top seed in the upcoming Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament in their sights and looked poised to grab it with an undefeated league season. Going 18-0 wasn’t just possible, it felt probable for a team that was firing in every way imaginable.
The Irish had designs on a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. A No. 1 next to the Notre Dame name seemed a put-it-in-pen given.
Five days after all of that was possible/probable, everything has fallen so completely apart that head coach Niele Ivey needed an extended post-game meeting with her staff and then with her team to pick up the pieces scattered about Purcell Pavilion to regroup after a second straight ACC collapse.
How long did Ivey need before emerging from a quiet and likely somber and maybe even a little confused locker room? Thursday’s 86-81 loss to No. 24 Florida State ended at 9:55 p.m. Ivey appeared in the Hammes Auditorium interview room at 11:16 p.m.
Following a game that took an hour and 53 minutes to complete, a game that the Irish led at one point by as many as 15 points, Ivey needed an hour and 19 minutes to address the issues with this loss. Thanks, Coach, we’ll just hang out in the auditorium on a late February weeknight with nowhere else to go and nothing else to do.
But wait.
And wait.
And wait, and watch the time tick away.
Once Ivey deicded to appear, the first question was the most obvious question – what flipped so decidedly in a game where Notre Dame looked like it would run away and hide before halftime?
“After they made that (12-0) run, it kind of put us on our heels,” Ivey said. “I felt like we were kind of chasing after that. Didn’t feel like we were getting the stops we were getting before.”
Everything that was in front of Notre Dame five days prior to this night, which was Notre Dame’s second consecutive league loss and second consecutive league game in which it allowed at least 86 points, is no longer there. It’s all gone.
The best Notre Dame can hope for now is a victory Sunday over rival Louisville, no easy task as fragile as the Irish seemed late Thursday, which would give it a share of the regular season conference championship. Notre Dame would split with North Carolina State, which would earn the No. 1 seed in next week’s league tournament based on Sunday’s double overtime win over the Irish and one more league win (against bottom feeder SMU).
Wins Thursday and Sunday would’ve given Notre Dame an outright ACC regular-season title. That’s what hurts. Notre Dame controlled its ACC regular-season destiny. Now it doesn’t. It has to hope for help.
A No. 2 seed in the ACC Tournament might be the best it gets for Notre Dame (24-4; 15-2). Same goes for the NCAA Tournament. Earlier Thursday, Notre Dame was projected as a No. 1 seed. That may only happen if the Irish run the table in Greensboro like they did last year.
Cutting down nets – any nets – seems so far away now for a team that seemed so close to making it a reality. That’s how fast it all turns today.
This wasn’t a game that Notre Dame was down and out from the jump. When the Irish raced to a big early lead, it looked like it would be another coast of a conference win. It looked like a classic Notre Dame bounce-back effort. All was well along Ivey Road.
Instead, Notre Dame got bounced.
“We’ve got to get back to work,” Ivey said. “We have to have a will that we’re not having for 40 minutes. We have to get back to the grind. You’ve got to fix it.”
Florida State hit another gear that Notre Dame couldn’t match. Florida State was quicker. Florida State was smarter. Florida State was more poised. Florida State was better. Notre Dame was just kind of there, and you can’t just be kind of there in March.
It’s basically March.
“It’s just a will that we’ve got to have,” said senior guard Sonia Citron. “We can talk all we want, but if we don’t change, if we don’t do it, then our season can end real fast. It’s a will that every single player has to have. We talk about it all the time, but it’s about time we do it.
“You can only talk so much.”
That Notre Dame couldn’t figure it out Thursday might be the toughest aspect of the loss. That and fans heading for the exits with time still on the clock in the fourth quarter. You want to get a jump on post-game traffic, you go to a Notre Dame men’s game.
Leave a women’s game early? Blasphemy, but this Irish team looked so un-Irish on Thursday, that fans had seen enough. That wasn’t the Hannah Hidalgo (4-of-18 from the field) that we’ve come to know. That wasn’t the Maddy Westbeld that we’ve come to expect. Olivia Miles? Didn’t recognize her.
Everything about Thursday was so foreign and on one of the biggest, gotta-have nights of the season. Senior Night is supposed to be one to remember. This was one to forget. It was that bad.
“We,” Citron said, “didn’t show up.”
Five days ago, before the double-overtime loss at North Carolina State, we couldn’t wait for March. Now who knows what that month might bring.
Like Citron said, stop talking.
Start playing.
The clock’s ticking.
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: Notre Dame women’s basketball has picked the wrong time to pick up the pieces
