2024-2025 Notre Dame Women's Basketball

laughingirish92

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hannah also tried too hard in second half and took too many really hard to make shots but in general the whole team was just off on both ends tonight
 

ozzman

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hannah also tried too hard in second half and took too many really hard to make shots but in general the whole team was just off on both ends tonight
I hate the throw up a prayer and beg cry for a foul. Not a good look for Olivia and Hannah.
 

Old Man Mike

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To those who got to watch the game: a million questions but these two mostly.

1. Explain Westbeld's (non-) game please. What happened? There was one quarter where she played less than a minute and never returned that period.

2. Latson was held in check for three quarters and then goes off in the 4th. What happened there?
 

ozzman

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To those who got to watch the game: a million questions but these two mostly.

1. Explain Westbeld's (non-) game please. What happened? There was one quarter where she played less than a minute and never returned that period.


2. Latson was held in check for three quarters and then goes off in the 4th. What happened there?

1. She had four fouls and rode the pine most of the entire second half.

2. They played a zone defense in the first half and held them until FSU started shooting 3s. In the second half they played man and couldn't keep FSU out of the paint. Latson drove right around anytime that tried to guard her 3 or 4 times in a row to ice the game.
 

Blazers46

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FSU #21 had a double-double before halftime. I did think the refs eat the whistle a lot which seemed to favor FSU. ND expected the calls they didn’t get and too much chirping at the refs.
 

Old Man Mike

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Unsurprisingly on Westbeld, but distressing.

I'm disappointed in Ivey that she does not realize that Westbeld is not a "5", and cannot play that position under almost any circumstance.

I get that there is a player-type problem to resolve on the squad, but she needs to bite the bullet and NOT play Westbeld (hardly ever) at "5".

We have this odd thing of four really undeniable starters (Hidalgo, Miles, Citron, and King.) We need someone willing to play the 5 to start with them, and then Westbeld to get lots of minutes off the bench when we rest any of the four. I'd make her the "6th man" and live with Koval and Karlen who are at least willing to mix it up.*** King will solve most of our problems if she just gets a little help.

*** Lord I wish we had Watson to start at an active big 5.
 

Irish#1

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sooooooo pissed off with this team right now because they had the conference title won and a #1 seed locked up just by winning these last three games on the schedule but now they decide to throw both away by forgetting how to play defense and rebound these last two games
Makes you wonder if they thought it was wrapped up.
 

Old Man Mike

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Watched the post-game press conference. Ivey trusted only one player to come out there with her at the table: Citron.

Questions were asked and sort of answered, all coach like professionally (Ivey taking blame for bad defense on team. )

They asked Soni about the defense. She said that defense requires everyone to want to do it, and they (the girls) talk about it all the time.

Then she said: it's time to stop talking.

.... I know that I should not speculate on anything personnel-wise, but Soni (VERY "anonymously" and teammate-loyal) seems to be telling me something that's hard to avoid. We know that she works her butt off every play, every game. When we watch the games, we see King doing that too, and Prosper is trying hard most of the time (The clue is watching the player when she is NOT on the ball. Is she watching and in athletic position/movement to provide potential help side? That's not the only thing, but it's the best clue to whether a player wants to play defense.) Hannah also usually is doing this, but occasionally gets a little moody. Karlen seems trying hard even if not always with success. Same really for Koval --- she's mainly just clumsy not lazy. So who is left? This was senior night. Ivey SHOULD have brought "seniors" out there with her at the press conference. She brought Soni only.

"Let those who have eyes, see."

......... I don't like my conclusions but it's what I've seen all year.
 

irishrb

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Unsurprisingly on Westbeld, but distressing.

I'm disappointed in Ivey that she does not realize that Westbeld is not a "5", and cannot play that position under almost any circumstance.

I get that there is a player-type problem to resolve on the squad, but she needs to bite the bullet and NOT play Westbeld (hardly ever) at "5".

We have this odd thing of four really undeniable starters (Hidalgo, Miles, Citron, and King.) We need someone willing to play the 5 to start with them, and then Westbeld to get lots of minutes off the bench when we rest any of the four. I'd make her the "6th man" and live with Koval and Karlen who are at least willing to mix it up.*** King will solve most of our problems if she just gets a little help.

*** Lord I wish we had Watson to start at an active big 5.
Unfortunately that is a HUGE problem...There's no one that can play it right now. I was hoping Koval could develop to be ready for some big time minutes come tourney time...but...she isn't. She has slow feet and average hands. It's such a disservice for Westbeld to play there, but obviously Ivey doesn't know what to do about it....because there's truly no one on the team that can play it at the high level that is needed...
 

BabyIrish

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OMM, I was at the game and it's the most frustrated I've seen Soni on the court. Olivia and Maddy had horrendous games. Olivia usually does on the defensive end but she was equally bad on the offensive end. Maddy is not in a good place mentally. That's very clear. I honestly think Ivey needs to look at starting Koval. She has her young moments where she makes mistakes, but she actually tries to play defense and rebound and gives us our only threat in the low post.
In terms of the team:
Defense- Zone worked really well through the first 13 minutes. Then it fell apart. Not sure if that was on us losing our focus or FSU figuring it out. They did get hot from 3 on some contested looks so props to them for that. Man to man worked decent in the second half until we tired out in the fourth, specifically Soni. What was most concerning is that the team couldn't execute basic help defense when Latson beat Sonia. Mind boggling.
Offense- Inconsistent. Honestly, it looks like the coaching staff is trying to get the team to play more team oriented, but Hannah and Olivia just default to pick and roll. I remember a lot of times of both of them coming down trying to get the offense set and then it didn't happen, and they would just call for a screen. Offense needs a lot of work.

In terms of individual players:
Olivia is playing for trying to be the #1 pick in the draft. She focuses way too much on flashy plays and unfortunately now that we are playing better teams it's not working and it looks awful. Just play fundamental basketball.
Hannah- She hasn't played well in February, especially in terms of her shooting and the frustration is growing with her. I do not think it now has to do with her trying to win player of the year. I think she's genuinely frustrated that she's not contributing to the team. My guess is she has never been in a slump like this in her career. Hopefully she bounces out of it.
Sonia- A warrior. I'd draft her first every single time. She did get beat by Latson due to fatigue I'm guessing in the fourth but she's second to none.
Liatu- Also a warrior. She did the best she could in the post. She tried to play defense although size discrepancy was an issue tonight. She battled for rebounds. She was active on offense. I'd try to get her on my team every time too.
Maddy- Not in a good place. Nothing else needs to be said.
Karlen- awful game. Needs to be better as a graduate senior. Don't need her to score a ton of points, but needs to have awareness that boxing out includes going after the ball and not just standing there. Saw way too many times her waiting for others to get rebounds as she boxed out instead of her attacking.
Koval- Played well for a freshman. Needs to continue to develop no doubt, but she should see more minutes.
Cass- I have no idea why she didn't play more. Frustrating to see her lack of usage tonight, when the defense was horrendous at times, and you know she can be better than other options. That's on the coaches.
 

ozzman

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Defense- Zone worked really well through the first 13 minutes. Then it fell apart. Not sure if that was on us losing our focus or FSU figuring it out. They did get hot from 3 on some contested looks so props to them for that. Man to man worked decent in the second half until we tired out in the fourth, specifically Soni. What was most concerning is that the team couldn't execute basic help defense when Latson beat Sonia. Mind boggling.

FSU kept trying to drive on the zone and couldn't get anything going. They called timeout when they went down 15 to change their game plan. It helps when they made the switch and were lights out from 3. When ND switched back to man in the second half, they looked the threes, but FSU went back to the original game plan and the lane opened back up. ND never went back to the zone.

The help defense was there a few times and clogged the lane, but there were so many times that no one moved. It was maddening to watch them easily get to the rim over and over.
 

Old Man Mike

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BabyI: THANK YOU. Those words (and their detailed useful information) were "rain in my desert." ALL of what you said makes SO much sense. I agree on Koval. I'll even give the staff a pass on trying to go a different way in hopes of sailing through the season and tournaments with Westbeld and King and the guards being enough on the boards and elsewhere. Now that this has shown NOT to be enough, please yes, let's get Koval back in the pivot, and not play Westbeld vs bigs she cannot or won't play physically. Karlen can split the time with Koval.

I know that it's heresy, but if Ivey could convince Maddy to sit to begin with, and promise to get her 25+ minutes of Liatu's and the guards' time as super-sub, I'd like to see us start Hidalgo, Citron, King, Koval, and Miles (I remember that starting five's play earlier pre-Maddy anyway), and if Miles won't play team ball jump her ass and sub in Prosper. Soni and Hannah can run the point anyway --- they did all last year. Even if we lose another one or two, we just might be ready for the NCAAs, and if Hannah snaps out of it then, we have a legitimate shot. We are still dangerous plus.
 

laughingirish92

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well our irish are co acc champs after a way better performance today against a pretty decent cardinals squad and now go into this week's acc tournament as the #2 seed behind the wolfpack
 

Old Man Mike

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Defense won this game in the middle quarters. Also, opposing coach (who I believe to be a good coach) UNDERestimated the positive effect for his team when hard pressing ND's "invulnerable" guards. We do NOT play well vs set presses, and I believe that it's because we (i.e. the staff) do not think that with our guard talent they need to address it much. (Our staff is wrong.)

Which leads me to another growing revealed weakness: Opposing coaches now see that in every pick and roll situation with either Hannah or Olivia, the "secret" is to just double team hard, and forget the picker. Our picker is never quickly given the ball, so is no concern. Part of this is that both Hannah and Olivia slow-walk into these double teams as if they will not be any problem for them. In Hannah's case, she's correct about half the time, but it's no cakewalk to survive it (lots of flailing around and wild passing). In Olivia's case, she is correct almost Zero percent of the time, and constantly is in bailout mode. My opinion?: this will be an increasing terrible offense problem, and Ivey better address it.

Another flaw that we survived: Ivey correctly realizes that even Liatu needs a bench break now and then. There was a period in the game when she was sitting that we controlled almost zero percent of the boards. And if Louisville had been better, they would have been right down our throats. A few horrible minutes passed, Liatu came back in, and miraculously all that stopped. (As an aside, I believe that Liatu's mask hinders her peripheral vision, especially on finding loose balls on the floor.)

It seemed that part of the game plan was to try to integrate the three bigs better (at least psychologically) into the offense. So who sacrificed her offense? You know without thinking about it. Soni ended up taking something like 5 shots. I'm for the bigs getting involved. I'm not for everyone simply ignoring Soni by sticking her in the baseline corner.

But we won. We won with defense and Hannah making some drives finally, and a couple of opponents getting a little dinged. Liatu had something like 11 boards and three blocked shots and my "game ball." And we won because with one exception and a bunch of hustlers, Louisville isn't good enough offensively to score enough. I fear teams now with deep groups of well-coordinated guards pressing and trapping all over the place. Both Olivia (especially) and Hannah must stop casually cruising into these traps. Ivey must design trap-beater offense. Otherwise? ..... dreams end.
 

stpeteirish

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Beating Louisville is always great but I think the win today was more about Louisville sucking that anything we did. They missed a ton of easy shots, got the offensive rebound, and missed again. We give up way too many offensive rebounds.
I was encouraged by Koval’s apparent improvement. Vs top end teams we will need better post play than what Karlen and Westbeld have been giving us
 

irishandy

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Bounce back win today. I think the one main thing that ND needs to improve on for the ACC and NCAA tournament is their defense. I haven't seen as many steals for Hidalgo and I think the team feeds off of her defense.
 

irishrb

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Bounce back win today. I think the one main thing that ND needs to improve on for the ACC and NCAA tournament is their defense. I haven't seen as many steals for Hidalgo and I think the team feeds off of her defense.
The defense was better today when Koval, Karlen, and Prosper were in. They HAVE to manage bench minutes better in the tourney...Have to!
 

Old Man Mike

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Dilemma: Miles absolutely sucks on defense. TV commentators would remark quickly in situations where she was one-on-one up top that Louisville knew NOT to bring another offensive player anywhere near that so as to threaten a switch by another ND defender. All one-on-ones isolated against Miles were considered a major Louisville advantage. BUT, when she's not semi-consciously cruising about, she CAN make our offense great. She's a classic example of deciding how much you want to live with the cancer in your defense in order to get the offensive wizardry. (In a different offensively explosive way, this was the same dilemma Muffet had with Ogumbalawe.) There are two keys with living with this: 1. The offensive/offending player really DOES have to contribute more positives than she screws up on the scoreboard; and 2. the lazy incompetent defensive play cannot drag down the rest of her teammates trying to work hard defensively only to see some snoozing non-effort give all the effort away.

It's easy for us (relatively easy anyway) to judge whether Miles is actually contributing much offensively at given stages of the game. We have experienced eyes. It's not as easy for us fans to feel if she is taking the heart out of her teammates desire to get after it both ends. If you watch the defense closely, you can always spot moments when a player will watch an easy score breakdown, and hang their head or turn and stare. ... or others where the "energy" of the defense seems to have unaccountably dropped. The coaching staff should be able to feel this though. (When I was helping, a little with stats, Ron Stewart coaching our girls here at WMU, we had a girl who was a terrific bomber ... and our team was not loaded with offense. We DID have great defenders though, and often won "ugly" games by just that. Still, there on the bench was that bomber. One game we were at high defensive character and just couldn't get away from the opponent because of our offense. In came the bomber --> three pointer. On the other end, matador defense and an opponent bomb. Back down, our bomber strikes again. On the other end, matador again. You could see the other girls just sag. The bomber struck again. And matadors again [now typical dumb game watchers were only noticing the three bombs, not the three, then four lazy zero effort give-ups.] Coach took her out. But it was too late. Our defense had been subtly demoralized and it took several minutes to get the spark back.)

Arike's team was able to survive her matador-ism because the other four had adult court experience and tough minds. Nevertheless I saw MANY plays when one of them would stare at her as if to say: what in the hell are you doing? Our only two home-grown veterans who are in any position to do that are Soni and Maddy. Maddy is the same problem as Olivia, so she's hardly the solution. That leaves Soni --- again. And that's why Ivey brought only her to the press after the loss a game ago. And what did Soni say in her understated way? "We" talk about defense all the time; now it's time to stop talking. ........ this situation is not easy.
 

BabyIrish

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Fun game today.
Overall team thoughts.

Defense was better. I was pretty upset in the first quarter. I think there were three instances of a Louisville player getting to the rim without any help defense. They finally started to actually perform basic team defense after that and the rest was history.

Offense- I saw improvements. The team was looking for the pass a lot more today. Which I appreciate. If Muffet was coaching this team with her offense i honestly think this would be a historic team. But it’s not to be. We miss way too many east shots for my taste right now. But I concur with OMM. Our screening offensive sets should be much more effective then they currently are.

I’ll give a shout-out to Karlen today. Nice bounce back game for her. She was aggressive on the boards and defense. It was great to see her take three successful charges today.

Loved the way Koval looked. Still needs work on rebounding but she’s out only true post threat on offense and plays defense on players her size really well. She deserves more minutes.

Cass still needs to play more. She gives max effort on defense. A 6’2 guard with that wing span and speed and defensive tenacity should be a real weapon. They under utilize her.

Great to see Hannah driving and scoring again.

Let’s bring down the nets next weekend!!
 

Old Man Mike

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I apologize for too much fixating on this, but one more subtle positive thing that I noticed this game (and to a degree the previous one.) While the game is going on, during the stoppages of play (like grouping about pre-free throws etc), Soni is continually coming over to Hannah like a big sister and smiling at her, saying something, and even holding both hands for just a second. Hannah likes this and smiles back. Soni is being on-court Big Sister helping Hannah feel like joyful Little Sister .... one of the greatest things I've seen all this season.
 

stpeteirish

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ACCT bracket is out. FSU and NC St are in the other side from us. If the seedings hold we’d play Duke in the semis.(Saturday)
Cal/Virginia/Pitt are the potential quarter final opponents (Friday)
We have a double bye so won’t play until Friday
 

BabyIrish

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ACCT bracket is out. FSU and NC St are in the other side from us. If the seedings hold we’d play Duke in the semis.(Saturday)
Cal/Virginia/Pitt are the potential quarter final opponents (Friday)
We have a double bye so won’t play until Friday
UNC also on the side with FSU and NC St. It’s definitely a favorable bracket for us. Our biggest challengers are Louisville and Duke in the semifinals. They both seem weak on offense. Unless they somehow catch fire against us (totally plausible) we should be in the finals looking to avenge a regular season loss.
 

laughingirish92

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didn't get to see the whole list yet but Hildalgo named ACC POY and defensive POY with Citron also first team
 

Old Man Mike

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Yep. They vote 15 players on "first team." Hannah was #1; Olivia was #3; and Soni was #6.

Liatu did not make the top 15, showing that voters are, as usual, morons focussed only on points.

Ivey finished #2 in coach-of-year votings. Westbeld was unmentioned in any category.

Koval was #6 in rookie voting.
 

ozzman

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Koval misses more layups than anyone I've seen at this level. Maddening. You can tell how pissed it makes Hannah
 

laughingirish92

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31-28 over CAL bears at the half in the ACC tournament, irish could very well lose this game as they have missed a ton of open shots
 
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