Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM AUGUST 2024 49 WOMEN'S BASKETBALL BY TYLER HORKA N o t re Da m e p l aye d so m e s to u t competition in 2023-24. The sea- son started against eventual national champion South Carolina and all of the Gamecocks' many, many talented stars. Final Four participant UConn and former National Player of the Year Paige Bueckers came a little later on. The Irish battled Syracuse and ACC Player of the Year runner-up Dyaisha Fair twice. The list goes on and on. The most points any individual player on the schedule scored against the Fighting Irish was 34. Florida State's Ta'Niya Latson got there in double overtime. Pitt forward Liatu King only needed regulation to match that mark, putting a serious scare in the Irish in a 71-66 Notre Dame victory Jan. 4. And now, she's a member of the Fighting Irish program. King 's long awaited transfer por- tal destination announcement came May 6, and the ACC's Most Improved Player and a first-team all-conference selection chose Notre Dame. King aver- aged 18.7 points and 10.3 rebounds per game as a senior at Pitt. The 6-foot forward was unques- tionably one of the league's best play- ers from start to finish, all year long. She was a model of consistency in her final season as a Panther, scoring in double figures in 30 of 32 games. She had double-digit rebounds in an ACC- high 19 games and recorded 18 double- doubles, which would have paced Notre Dame. Forward Maddy Westbeld had the most of any Irish player with 12. "Liatu is just a dog," Westbeld told Blue & Gold Illustrated. "She's just a bucket. She's great to play with. I'm re- ally excited to play with her. I think the two of us can be a really cool dynamic. "Especially with the offense we have; it's very guard-heavy. With the skills she has, I think we'll be able to go five out or just run on everybody." For her career, King averaged 10.9 points and 7.8 rebounds per game in 107 appearances and 70 starts at Pitt. She improved her statistics every sea- son she was there, from 5.0 points and 4.6 rebounds per game in 19 appear- ances with zero starts in 2020-21 to the phenomenal season she just had. She was not an every-game starter until her senior year. Whether she's an every-game starter at Notre Dame remains to be seen. The Fighting Irish are bringing in five-star center Kate Koval, and Notre Dame already has Westbeld coming back to start in the frontcourt for a fifth season as well. Notre Dame head coach Niele Ivey has some lineup management to ponder with the addition of King, but that's a good problem to have. TWO'S COMPANY Notre Dame's massive, massive, massive transfer portal acquisition of King on May 6 should not distract from the major addition of Marquette's Liza Karlen on May 5. The latter has all the tools to make just as much of an impact for the Fight- ing Irish as the former. In many ways, Karlen is a similar player to King. They're roughly the same size — Karlen is 6-foot-2 while King is 6-0 — and they play the same brand of basketball; busy, energetic, relentless. That's the point. Why settle for one frontcourt spark plug when you can go out and get two? This was a targeted coup of spit- ting images of each other. Notre Dame head coach Niele Ivey succeeded in her quest to take the Irish's frontcourt personnel from talented but not so deep to talented and as deep as the Grand Canyon. Karlen and King might end up steal- ing some minutes from each other. There are only two post positions. Westbeld will occupy one of them as a starter. Karlen, King and five-star freshman Kate Koval will compete for the other. If it's the 6-foot-5 freshman who gets the nod, she'll have earned it; Karlen and King have combined for 155 collegiate starts in their respective ca- reers. Karlen is responsible for 85 of those. She averaged 17.7 points and 7.9 rebounds per game as a senior and was a unanimous first-team All-Big East selection. "She brings a wealth of experience and the depth to the forward position and has tremendous versatility of- fensively," Ivey said. "Liza also has an incredible motor and is a relentless re- bounder. I am so grateful and excited for what she will add to our team next season." Karlen would've led Notre Dame in offensive rebounds with 77. Defen- sively, she's a stopper. The sturdy kind of paint presence that ball handlers steer clear of, instead looking for other options, of which there might not be many against a strong Notre Dame de- fense that gets even better by bring- ing in Karlen, King and Koval. Karlen would have been Notre Dame's No. 2 free throw shooter at 82.2 percent be- hind Sonia Citron's mark of 91.2 per- cent, too. She does all the little things right. "She is someone who is going to give us an incredible spark," Westbeld told BGI. "Her experience, her leadership remind me of Anna DeWolfe in how she is completely formed." ✦ Notre Dame Adds Two All-Conference Forwards To 2024-25 Roster Pittsburgh forward Liatu King, who scored 34 points against the Fighting Irish last season, transferred to Notre Dame this offseason. PHOTO COURTESY PITT ATHLETICS