2024-2025 Notre Dame Women's Basketball

[BabyIrish]

Complacency? Hard to be complacent when you're in the sweet sixteen and you have to play a team that took you apart earlier in the season. We've lost in the regionals with regularity in recent years. Hardly the stage for complacency.
However, I am worried about the match ups vs TCU. How do we keep Prince from getting 20+ points without leaving their 3 point shooters? That's the big issue vs these guys.

I mean we got to the #1 ranking and it certainly looked like complacency crept in. All the articles and talk today with the two wins is that they are back to their old self pre the last week of February. If they listen to the talk, complacency can creep back in.

 

[Old Man Mike]

The really NOTICEABLE difference though is not resident in the majority of the team as a PRIMARY effect, but specifically in a.) Miles and Westbeld in terms of giving a damm about constant effort on defense, and b.) the renewed King (oddly coincidental with losing the Mask.) Part "a" of this has recreated the joyfulness in Hannah (and I suspect Soni, although she'll never show it), and I believe also King and Karlen.) Liatu's return to "true Liatu" is a simpler read: if we screw up, she just grabs the ball anyway and we try again.

So, I my opinion, the complacency issue resides ONLY in Miles and Westbeld. Ivey SHOULD be able to spot that quickly in the game and bench their butts as a reminder. Prosper and Karlen/Koval can carry on for a while until a shade tree defender wakes up and decides to play basketball.

... also, as far as "listening to talk", I believe that Citron, King, Karlen, Koval, Prosper, and, at this stage of the season, Hidalgo, don't listen to any talk. I don't think Westbeld does either, but for the wrong reason that she is effort-tone-deaf period. It's Miles we have to worry about, because she is the one person we have who has apparently gotten away all her life being so much better (and stronger) than competition that she habitually plays defense as cruising rest time. Ivey has to have a fire under her butt all the time. One thing that we MIGHT have going for us is the national commentary noticing and talking about how lazy she's been defensively EXACTLY when the WNBA scouts have congregated in the stands. Hopefully Ivey et al are cleverly dropping hints that she's hurting her draft stock.

 

[Me2SouthBend]

Not ND but NCAAW related Juju Watkins down tonight what looked like serious knee injury.

 

[Irish#1]

What a performance. Liatu was amazing. Soni and Hannah were amazing. We only ended up having 16 assists, but I can recall multiple times where we missed wide open attempts off passes. So even though the production wasn't there, the opportunities to have 20+ assists were.
My biggest worry with this team is complacency. Whatever the coaches did in the two weeks leading up to the tourney, they need to keep on doing. It worked. Don't pat yourself on the back for two blow-out wins against inferior opponents. Get back to work.

For context, Michigan played USC close twice. First game they were only down by 3 at the half and then USC pulled away. Michigan was leading at the half in the second game before USC pulled away in the fourth. This team has the talent to be special. But the road gets tough with TCU and presumably Texas in the Elite Eight.

I think these last two games should have removed any worry that you had given both games were blow outs. I thought they were somewhat complacent in the last 5-6 games. Maybe they were just wanting the tourney to begin.

 

[Irish#1]

Not ND but NCAAW related Juju Watkins down tonight what looked like serious knee injury.

ACL tear. Surgery scheduled. Big blow for USC.

 

[arrowryan]

Juju is likely out next year too, with an injury in late March.

ESPN only talks about Juju and Beuckers, as if they’re the two best teams in the country. Neither of them are even top 3 and ND beat both by 10+.

 

[BabyIrish]

Juju is likely out next year too, with an injury in late March.

ESPN only talks about Juju and Beuckers, as if they’re the two best teams in the country. Neither of them are even top 3 and ND beat both by 10+.

Yeah, Stephen A and Shannon have jumped on the Juju train, so naturally she'll win the POY award because of it. But I'm convinced the best player in the country is Soni and the good thing is she doesn't need an award or recognition for her to play well. Soni's been showing out for a while now and I don't see that slowing down anytime soon.

 

[Old Man Mike]

Opinions:

Player-of-the-year is Bueckers (and I REALLY don't like Connecticut, so that's hard to say.) She (unless hurt) has no bad games, and rarely any bad plays. Unless their other top player is in the line-up (weird name like Fudd or Fuzz), she gets 100% of the defense's attention, and produces anyway. I've seen a close game where she literally took over the entire 4th quarter. (Offense, rebounding, defense, everything.) Paige Bueckers is up there in a class of UCONN assassins named Taurasi and Stewart. (How does the bastard always get them?)

We've seen that a great defender like Soni can shut Watkins down for most of the game. Or we've seen Hannah have mysterious funk games. The only other player with no personally-off funk games is the UCLA center, and she depends upon her guards to play top shelf herself. If UCLA wins the championship, she might get the award due to that.

Our favorite girl, Soni, DOES have a flaw by the way. She is not very lower body strong, and that gets to be a big deal when she has the ball moving near the basket. She, unlike Hannah, JuJu, Paige, cannot take much contact in that situation and get up a controlled shot of almost any kind. If she could get whacked into, or had a trait where she deliberately sought contact, AND THEN could regain upper body balance to square for a shot, she just might be POY. But she can't score in body-whacking physical-contact traffic. She always is taking the brunt of a collision. Not being able to restabilize after collision costs her ten points per game potential offense (i.e. most of games she will not even seek that sort of court area out because she knows she can't finish in there.)

 

[fightingirish26]

Absolutely massive Soni fan here, favorite player on the team. She's So well rounded. But she's not POY, nor should she be. She belonged on one of the AA squads though, for sure.

 

[BabyIrish]

I didn't say she should be POY as she started off slow; but when she is on I still think she's the best player in the country with her exceptional play on both sides of the court.

 

[Old Man Mike]

Because she's the ultimate "Coach's Player" and with her always-team attitude, she is surely the most likable high quality player in the country for real basketball people.

 

[Old Man Mike]

Interesting listening to the recent interview of Olivia, Soni, and Hannah.

Without using these terms, all of them said that Ivey basically chewed out and kicked all their asses in the practices pre-NCAA tournament, and those "hostile" (that WAS Olivia's word) practices re-focussed their intensity of play. (It would take a person with a concrete block of a head NOT to see that this referred to defensively intensity particularly from Miles.)

 

[laughingirish92]

Interesting listening to the recent interview of Olivia, Soni, and Hannah.

Without using these terms, all of them said that Ivey basically chewed out and kicked all their asses in the practices pre-NCAA tournament, and those "hostile" (that WAS Olivia's word) practices re-focussed their intensity of play. (It would take a person with a concrete block of a head NOT to see that this referred to defensively intensity particularly from Miles.)

well they needed it because they stunk on both ends of the court the last month or so pre ncaa tournament

 

[NumbersGuy0520]

Not the best start - lady Irish getting carved up early.

 

[UPMich_NDfan]

does she go zone out of timeout?

 

[UPMich_NDfan]

Koval’s size really helps on D but good lord such a liability on offense. They don’t use her very well, Run the chicago action with her handing ball off - get down hill on prince.

 

[Old Man Mike]

We started with the wrong match-ups. Hannah on Van Lith was a bad guess. We came back when Ivey altered this to Soni on Van Lith. Van Lith is still a major problem but this will slow that down some. Ivey also benched Miles and Westbeld to get us functioning . We'll see if we can match their talent and coaching cleverness.

 

[UPMich_NDfan]

We started with the wrong match-ups. Hannah on Van Lith was a bad guess. We came back when Ivey altered this to Soni on Van Lith. Van Lith is still a major problem but this will slow that down some. Ivey also benched Miles and Westbeld to get us functioning . We'll see if we can match their talent and coaching cleverness.

Maddy’s going to have to hit that shot on pick and pop if she’s not going to leave the paint. we need to exploit that horse$hit defensive drop coverage

 

[NumbersGuy0520]

Someone take the charge on Prince. She’s bodying a lot.

 

[UPMich_NDfan]

Someone take the charge on Prince. She’s bodying a lot.

would be huge to get 3 on her.

 

[Old Man Mike]

Soni on Van Lith is working ... can't stop her but she's WAY slowed down (this isn't just scoring but the whole business of operating the offense, including the center's opportunities.) They are starting to figure out that they need to go into that center more, since we don't double team. That's not good for us.

 

[notredomer23]

Someone take the charge on Prince. She’s bodying a lot.

Makes sense she’s a domestic abuser and has no business playing team sports

 

[UPMich_NDfan]

Liatu on the bench way too long.
Refs bailing out Prince 3 times - should have had her 3rd foul on the back.

We HAVE to shoot better coming off ball screen. literally missing wide open jumpers on the drop coverage.

Maddy could take us to the elite 8 by drilling a few this half if the aren’t going to guard her.

We shot terrible and have a 2 point lead.

 

[Blazers46]

Hidalgo 1-8 and lead by 2… I’ll take it.

 

[Old Man Mike]

Hannah hasn't quite figured this game out yet. If she does, we probably win.

Van Lith notoriously kills teams in 4th quarters. We have to keep Soni high-energy, and DO NOT allow Olivia EVER to be on her.

I wish that Ivey could figure out how to get some double-team crash-down on Prince when she's dribbling down low.

Not at all confident about some of the options here. Hannah exploding could cure all that.

 

[BabyIrish]

Offense is back to its old self. Less movement and more reliance on screens and drives. Not sure if that will be good enough for us to win.

 

[UPMich_NDfan]

Have to give Maddy some credit. She’s doing a heck of a job on Prince.

 

[NumbersGuy0520]

Offense is all out of sorts. No timeout coach?

 

[BeauBenken]

Officiating is all over the place. I'm usually for let 'em play but there have been some muggings that have not been called and some ticky-tack things that have.

 

[BabyIrish]

Officiating is all over the place.

Very much so. Same stuff that were being called for ain’t being called on the other end.