Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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www.BLUEANDGOLD.com OCT. 30, 2021 49 WOMEN'S BASKETBALL BY TYLER HORKA I t's fair to speculate on Notre Dame's 2021-22 season. Will the Irish get back to their win- ning ways, or will they continue the trend — one marked by mediocrity and middling performances — established in the last two seasons? Those are the two most pertinent questions, in their most basic forms, head coach Niele Ivey's team faces entering her second season in charge of the program. Sophomore forward Maddy Westbeld, Notre Dame's leading scorer from last year's roster and a 2021-22 preseason All-ACC honoree, answered them rather emphatically at the ACC Tipoff media day event Oct. 13. "We're coming for everybody this year," Westbeld said. "Every game is personal." There's a confidence about this Notre Dame team. A 13-18 finish in Muffet McGraw's final season and a 10-10 re- cord in Ivey's first have not tempered expectations. Only two players, senior guards Katlyn Gilbert and Abby Prohaska, were on the Notre Dame team that finished as the NCAA runner-up in a national cham- pionship game loss to Baylor in 2018-19. Nobody on this year's roster is around from the national title team of 2017-18. And yet, the way this group of Irish players talk about the upcoming season would lead many to believe they were all a part of those magical runs. "This year we have a squad of 10 so we're small [in roster size], but we're so big in the heart we have and the closeness that we share," Westbeld said. "And the chemistry that we have is something really special. We can do awesome things this year in a lot of dif- ferent ways, and I'm really excited." Don't get Westbeld and her teammates wrong. They know they haven't made it to the big stages they would have liked to the last two seasons. If anything, that self-admission fuels the fire even more. "That drive, having that sour taste in your mouth from not being where you wanted to be and where you set yourself and your team to be, definitely plays a factor into what we want to do this year," senior guard Dara Mabrey said. Ivey issued a head-turning, eyebrow- raising quote at ACC Tipoff. "Our first day of practice, you'd have thought we had not played basketball in years," Ivey said. It's easy to misconstrue that as a neg- ative. It might imply the Irish looked like they had no idea what to do on the floor. But with help from the moderator, Ivey made sense of her statement. "In a great way," she clarified. "In a great way — energy-wise. Perfor- mance-wise, perfect. Just the appre- ciation of being on the floor, having that pride of putting a Notre Dame practice jersey on, being together, the chemistry that we created together in the summer, the commitment, the buy-in, the love that they have — I felt like it exuded in everything we did in practice." Ivey said it has been that way since the team got back on the court at the end of last month. She said she's had to force Mabrey and Westbeld to leave the facility some days. Winning basketball games takes more than effort and chemistry. It takes tal- ent, coaching and everything coming together. It takes a dominance down low that can't be taught, too. Do Westbeld (6-3), Stanford transfer Maya Dodson (6-3), junior Sam Brunelle (6-2) and sophomore Natalija Marshall (6-5) combine to form a formidable enough post presence to get Notre Dame back into a position in which it can dictate games from the inside out? That ques- tion will be answered when the Irish play the likes of Syracuse (Nov. 14), Georgia (Nov. 26), Oregon State (Nov. 27), Michi- gan State (Dec. 2) and UConn (Dec. 5) all within the first month of the season. This is what has already been an- swered, though: Notre Dame is all-in on Ivey as its head coach, and the players believe she is the coach who can take the program back to the top of the summit in women's college basketball. "She brings that fire and passion every day because of that deep appreciation she has for Notre Dame and the university," Mabrey said. "Playing for her has just been an honor. She gets it. Sometimes it just feels like she's one of us out there challeng- ing us because she was in our shoes before. "She gets on you, but every time she does I'm like, 'She believes in me.' And that's all it is. It's never like, 'Oh, she's mad' or this or that. No. She just has this passion for the game you need to live up to because that's what you're supposed to do and that's the standard of Notre Dame women's basketball." ✦ Why 'Every Game Is Personal' For Notre Dame Sophomore forward Maddy Westbeld led the Irish in scoring last season with 15.2 points per game and is driven to improve the team's performance this year. PHOTO COURTESY NOTRE DAME ATHLETICS NOTRE DAME LANDS TOP 30 RECRUIT Notre Dame landed the first piece of its 2022 recruiting class. Mount Notre Dame (Ohio) High School four-star guard KK Bransford committed to the fighting Irish on Oct. 9. Bransford, 5-10, is the No. 29 overall recruit in the class according to the espnW 100. Bransford is the second straight Ohio Ms. Basketball winner to commit to Notre Dame, joining sophomore Maddy Westbeld in that regard. Bransford averaged 21.4 points, 6.4 rebounds, 5.1 assists and 3.0 steals to win the 2021 award. Mount Notre Dame coach Scott Rogers said one of the biggest factors in Bransford's decision was choosing a school capable of winning national championships. She felt Notre Dame is on the verge of getting back in that picture. — Tyler Horka