How Notre Dame’s return to ‘Perfect Defense’ might have saved its season
SOUTH BEND, Ind. — It’s called Perfect Defense, both the name of the practice drill and the only way Notre Dame coach Niele Ivey will consent to ending it. Sometimes it’s two-on-two against the scout team of men at the ready. Sometimes it’s four-on-four or five-on-five.
Whatever the alignment, Notre Dame puts 35 seconds on the shot clock, then tries to nail every switch, every rotation, every help side assignment. Winning only comes from not losing your man. And winning is the only way to get off the court.
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Otherwise, Ivey puts another 35 seconds on the clock and the whole process starts again.
“Perfect Defense is definitely one of my least favorite drills. It is kind of fun if you’re getting it. If you’re not, it can get a little tricky,” senior guard Sonia Citron said. “But it’s hard on purpose because you’re working on those little things that can make or break a game.”
As No. 3 seed Notre Dame heads to its fourth straight Sweet 16, where the past three seasons have ended, any shot for Ivey’s program advancing beyond No. 2 seed TCU on Saturday in Birmingham hinges on these details. Notre Dame lost sight of them as it blew a collective tire during the season’s home stretch, losing in double overtime at NC State before bottoming out at home against Florida State. Notre Dame surrendered a combined 190 points.
The Irish couldn’t stop the ball despite having one of the sport’s elite defenders in guard Hannah Hidalgo. It made it feel like nothing was working, an irreconcilable perspective after winning 19 straight games, a stretch that included beating Connecticut and Texas, with the Longhorns a likely Elite Eight opponent if Notre Dame makes it that far.
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Notre Dame course corrected slightly by beating Louisville to close the regular season and Cal to open the ACC tournament. It just didn’t look like the team that had risen to a No. 1 national ranking a month earlier. If there was any doubt, falling to Duke in the conference tournament semifinals settled it. If the ceiling on Notre Dame’s season was always the Final Four in Tampa, that late February stretch was a reminder that the floor might be closer than it appeared.
“The talent that we have, we kind of underachieved there towards the end, but I think kind of the lesson is that we need to get back to the basics,” Hidalgo said. “It helped us realize where our weaknesses are and now we were able to get back into the gym and work on those weaknesses so we can correct them.”
Two games into the NCAA Tournament, the results appear promising. Notre Dame blitzed Stephen F. Austin in the opening round as expected, then turned off Michigan’s water two days later, building a 20-point lead in the first quarter before cruising to the finish line. Hidalgo terrorized the Wolverines’ backcourt as freshmen Olivia Olson and Syla Swords combined for nine turnovers. When Swords did turn the corner on Hidalgo, the sophomore swatted Swords’ layup before staring her down.
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As much as Notre Dame is known for its perimeter play thanks to Hidalgo, Citron and Olivia Miles, all postseason advancement from here will be because of that defense, which Ivey understood after the ACC tournament exit. The Irish had roughly a week off before diving into NCAA prep, enough of a break for Ivey to turn back the clock on practices to the preseason when Notre Dame didn’t have to worry about two games per week.
Dead legs after practice? Didn’t matter. There was still a week of recovery coming.
The roster mentally healed from its slump first, thanks in part to Notre Dame’s spring break following the Duke loss. After a break to see family, the players convened at Maddy Westbeld’s house for a cookout, although weather relegated it to a cook-in. Such is March in northern Indiana. The mac and cheese, burgers and hot dogs all tasted the same.
“Definitely needed it,” Liatu King said. “The time away, coming back we knew practices were going to be intense going into the tournament and that’s what it was.”
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The reset — dietary and defensive — returned Notre Dame to a state of mind that could carry it through Birmingham, returning to the Final Four for the first time since Muffet McGraw’s penultimate season, when the Irish lost to Baylor in the title game. That was Notre Dame’s last true tournament run, the final act in a nine-year stretch when the Irish made the Elite Eight eight times and played for six national titles, cutting down the nets in 2018.
Ivey inherited a rebuild after McGraw’s final season ended with the program’s first losing season in 28 years. After a difficult debut, Notre Dame has looked more like itself under Ivey ever since, just without the corresponding postseason success to show for it.
“We don’t want to stay in the Sweet 16,” Miles said. “We want to make it out this year.”
If the Irish do, odds are their defense will be the reason. When Notre Dame lost 76-68 to TCU in November, it collapsed on the other end of the court, watching Hailey Van Lith flip the game with a 31-12 fourth quarter that handed the Irish their first loss of the season. Whatever loss could come next would be Notre Dame’s last, which wasn’t lost on the Irish during the two-week break between the ACC tournament and tipping off in the real postseason.
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“I think everything that we did in those last couple practices weren’t exactly things we wanted to do, but things we needed to do,” Citron said. “It was all defense. It was all drills where you had to get it. It’s shown that we needed it. We got it. We got better and here we are.”
Now the Irish must prove they deserve to stay.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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