Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1349365
www.BLUEANDGOLD.com APRIL 2021 15 From teaming with National Player of the Year Ruth Riley to help Notre Dame to a national title in 2001 to helping assemble elite talent as an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator for another championship in 2018, first-year head coach Niele Ivey has been around basketball royalty for decades. After just a couple of weeks of practice last fall, she projected 6-3 freshman forward Maddy Westbeld would join that exclusive company in Notre Dame lore. So it hardly came as a surprise to Ivey on March 2 when Westbeld was named the ACC Rookie of the Year by the league's coaches and earned first-team All-ACC accolades (10 players) from the Blue Ribbon media panel. Syracuse center Kamilla Cardoso won the Rookie of the Year honors from the Blue Ribbon Panel, but was second- team All-ACC by the coaches along with Westbeld. "From the moment she stepped on this campus I feel like she was one of the best players in the ACC [already], and I knew she was going to be," Ivey said. "She came in with a college body, the transition has been very simple for her … she's always been my hardest worker. She's al- ways in the gym, so coachable, such a great teammate." Amongst ACC freshmen in the regular season, West- beld ranked first in scoring (14.9 points per game), second in rebounding (7.8), second in steals (27), fourth in assists (49) and fourth in blocks (18). No other freshman in the league ranked in the top four in all those categories. Her scoring average also ranked 12th among all Divi- sion I rookies and currently would rank third all time amongst freshmen in Notre Dame history, behind Beth Morgan Cunningham (17.9) in 1993-94 and Shari Matvey (17.6) in 1979-80. She's the lone freshman in the country who during the regular season averaged at least 14.5 points, 7.5 re- bounds, 2.5 assists and 1.4 steals per game, only one of nine Division I players to achieve the feat — and the sole one from a Power Five school. Her advanced physical maturity is credited much to older sister Kathryn, who also was a McDonald's All- American in 2014 and a starter/the heartbeat for the 2018 national champs. "Having her to answer questions, having her to let me know what I should look like, how I should be training, what kind of shape I should be in by the time I get there was really vital in me being ready and being in that posi- tion to then show up ready for college," the younger West- beld said. "That whole summer of quar- antine, we were working out together every day and we kind of had the same goal of be ready and just put yourself in the best position to succeed by the time you get to college and be ready when you get there. That was my mindset." The Kettering, Ohio, native admitted that she hit a bit of the "freshman wall" this winter, but this time passes the credits to her teammates for keeping her confident and in the moment. "Everybody kept the same faith in me and the same confidence that I would do well," Westbeld said. "That just made it so much easier on myself to succeed. And then having my teammates to put me in the position to score, the offense that we are running, it's just kind of easy to get looks off of that. "It's kind of indescribable. I feel like literally none of this would have happened without God blessing me with the opportunity to play the game that I love, and then my teammates and coaches to instill the confidence and just let me play in an atmosphere I'm capable of playing in." Described as the consummate position-less basketball player in a positive way because of her versatility, West- beld is as comfortable settling low into the blocks as she at running some point or shooting the three, where she converted a healthy 39.6 percent (18 of 49). "I've always started out as kind of a four, at least at the beginning of the game … and kind of just do whatever I wanted from there," Westbeld said. "It kind of is an advantage and a dis- advantage because having that many options throughout the game it kind of gets more mental than physical. "So I think the easiest part for me is to start out a game in a four position where I can be on the boards or I can crash the glass and still be that physi- cal inside player — but then also I can start the break, start the press, run the offense a little bit." — Lou Somogyi UNDER THE DOME NOTRE DAME ROOKIE OF THE YEAR WINNERS ACC Maddy Westbeld (2021) Brianna Turner (2015) Big East Jewell Loyd (2013) Jacqueline Batteast (2002) Alicia Ratay (2000) Midwestern Collegiate Conference Beth Morgan (1994) Westbeld was tabbed as the ACC Rookie of the Year by the league's coaches and earned first-team all-conference honors from the media. PHOTO COURTESY NOTRE DAME ATHLETICS Freshman Maddy Westbeld Earns ACC Honors