Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM SEPT. 13, 2025 47 BY ERIC HANSEN I n the darkest corners Niele Ivey pushed herself to explore during some self- imposed postseason soul-searching, the Notre Dame women's basketball coach crossed paths with Marcus Freeman. And found inspiration. Just as Ivey and the Irish head foot- ball coach seem to coax from each other when life in the spotlight gives them a run of more right turns and green lights. "We're really great friends," Ivey told Blue & Gold Illustrated in a one-on-one interview. "He's somebody that I can lean on and vice versa. We communicate throughout the season. And, he's some- body I trust. He knows that we both just support each other, very encouraging of each other. He comes to my practices. I come to his practices. And we talk about the [college] landscape. We talk about recruiting. We talk about leadership. We talk about things in his program, my program. We're both good sounding boards for each other. "And I'm grateful to have that because that's not normal. It's very genuine. To have that type of friendship and have a colleague that supports us so much is really amazing." Northern Illinois. Those two words sum up Freeman's own in-season introspection and sub- sequent redemption. The Irish fourth- year head football coach turned a seismic 16-14 loss to a middling MAC school into a catalyst for making history over the balance of the 2024 season and finishing it with a College Football Playoff Na- tional Championship Game appearance. Ivey's crash-and-burn chapter wasn't quite as apocalyptic-feeling in the mo- ment, but it has been more elongated. A 19-game win streak this past sea- son, that included taking down eventual national champ UConn, and a rise to the No. 1 spot in both polls in mid-Febru- ary was chased by a 4-4 flattening out over Notre Dame's last eight games of the 2024-25 season, Ivey's fifth, with a 71-62 flameout to TCU in the NCAA Tournament's Sweet 16. Then came four defections via the transfer portal — some surprising, some not — including second-team All- America guard Olivia Miles to the TCU team that handed the Irish two of their six losses in a 28-6 bottom line. Coupled with five players with expiring eligibility and the only incoming fresh- man — five-star forward Leah Macy — undergoing a long ACL surgery rehab, what should have been an offseason of retooling recalibrated to more of a rebuild. Just three scholarship players return from a team that seemed destined for the Final Four, and one of those — guard KK Bransford — redshirted this past season. Two-time All-America guard Hannah Hidalgo and forward-sized guard (6-foot-3) and defensive ace Cass Prosper are the other two. Replenishing the roster with five transfers was only part of the offseason to-do list. There had to be a philosophical evolution that came along with it, Ivey admitted. "You learn a lot from the experiences that you have," she said. "You learn a lot from losses and having processed the season, connecting with the team. There's a lot of things that I learned, and I'll use moving forward. "A season is never a wasted season if you grow from it, learn from it, and utilize those experiences as you move forward. And right now, I'm building a new team. I have a new team this sum- mer and a new identity, which is really exciting for me." The specifics of the transformation are something Ivey tends to be more guarded about than, say, Freeman would be. That also goes for what ne- cessitated a more-contrasting identity when it comes to the lessons learned about team chemistry. "I typically don't discuss players who have left the program through the por- tal," Ivey said. "Whatever the circum- stances, past or present, it's just some- thing I don't typically do." And so she can tolerate leaving the framing of Miles and Hidalgo's one season of playing in the same backcourt together to those on the outside looking in. What Ivey is more open to sharing is what the blueprint looks like moving forward. "My philosophy has always been re- cruiting high school prospective stu- dent-athletes, and that's always what I've known, and that's always what I've attempted," Ivey said. "This past sea- son, as you see with our team and the majority of all the colleges, there was a lot of turnover. And this is the first time that has ever happened. Several schools lost five to six to eight players, and so it became more the norm this spring. But I think that's a one-off. I'm hoping that's not the case every season. I'm sure every coach probably feels the same way. "But my No. 1 goal is to bring in pro- spective student-athletes from high school and then supplement that roster with the transfer portal." ✦ Niele Ivey Spends Summer Recalibrating Ahead Of 2025-26 Season WOMEN'S B A S K E T B A L L Ivey has leaned into her friendship with Notre Dame football coach Marcus Freeman as she tries to navigate the Irish women's basketball team past a sour ending to the 2024-25 season and subsequent offseason roster turnover. PHOTO BY MICHAEL MILLER