Monday afternoon in Columbus, Ohio, two similar styles of basketball met in the Second Round of the NCAA Tournament. On one side, the No. 3 Ohio State Buckeyes, led by a speedy point guard who in only her second college season grabbed the attention of the country. The other featured No. 6 Notre Dame Fighting Irish, which boasted an equally quick point guard who has already been in that position for three years with similar pace and disruptiveness. In the end, there was a tiebreaker that the Fighting Irish take with them into the Sweet Sixteen \u2014 an unrelenting toughness forged in failure.<\/p>\n
Rewind to November 15, 2025. Outside of Detroit, Michigan, the Irish played the Michigan Wolverines in the Shamrock Classic. While the nonconference game bears the clover emblem of Notre Dame, and hosted by the prestigious university, the Wolverines played in front of basically a home crowd and handed head coach Niele Ivey\u2019s team not only a loss, but a 93-54 wake-up call<\/a>.<\/p>\n In that defeat, three-time All-American guard Hannah Hidalgo<\/a> had a season low 12 points on 19% shooting<\/a>. It was the fourth game of the season following an offseason where All-American guard Olivia Miles<\/a> left for the TCU Horned Frogs<\/a> and a trio of teammates left for the WNBA. Even so, that defeat gave the idea that Notre Dame was in for possibly a rebuilding season.\u00a0<\/p>\n The ACC schedule only increased that thought when the Irish went 7-6 in their first 13 games, including losses against two sides that did not even make the NCAA Tournament. With only a handful of matchups remaining, the question for the Irish was if there was a spot for them in the March Madness field at all.<\/p>\n On Monday, when the Buckeyes surged to an 11-0 run to start the game, it felt like it was the start of another Shamrock Classic \u2014 another matchup against a Big Ten team that would expose the Irish\u2019s flaws. Instead, it was a microcosm of the 2025-26 Notre Dame season as a whole, which meant a comeback was on its way.\u00a0<\/p>\n Notre Dame entered the Second Round with eight wins in its last nine. Outside of a two-point loss to the Duke Blue Devils<\/a> in the ACC Tournament semifinal, the Irish came into the final postseason tournament of the year nearly unblemished. The return of guard KK Bransford<\/a> from injury and a double-digit loss to the Virginia Cavaliers<\/a>, away from home, were the catalysts for the season turnaround. Monday\u2019s 83-73 turnaround victory over the Buckeyes was built on everything in the season that came before it.<\/p>\n \u201cThat is us staying together. I think our experience, a lot of us are seniors and grads, and we have that experience,\u201d Bransford told reporters. \u201cWe\u2019ve been through adversity throughout this whole entire season. So remembering that and knowing that it\u2019s a game of runs, it\u2019s a long game, that\u2019s the first couple minutes. Then we had to just sustain it.\u201d<\/p>\n Listen now to The IX Sports Podcast and Women\u2019s Sports Daily Within three minutes of Ohio State\u2019s double-digit jump to start the game, Hidalgo had three steals. On the final of the three, Hidalgo ran on the fast break to hit the shot that put Notre Dame within a single possession. That takeaway came against Ohio State\u2019s star point guard Jaloni Cambridge<\/a> on what is a usually normal dribble up the court. Hidalgo showed that both herself and the 25-26 Notre Dame side is anything but normal.\u00a0<\/p>\n Through Hidalgo\u2019s chaos-inducing defense where she turns the mundane moments like dribbling over the center line, the Irish set the tone for the rest of the game. Notre Dame was going to outwork, frustrate and overcome a deficit to earn a fifth straight trip to the Sweet Sixteen.<\/p>\n There are certain statistics on the stat sheet that show a teams toughness over others. They are columns of impact that shows one side purely wanting it more than the other and Notre Dame swept them all.<\/p>\n Take rebounding for example. Hidalgo stands at 5-foot-6, which meant she was the shortest player on the court. The guard led all players with 13 rebounds and two of them came on offensive boards, going up against a group of taller Buckeyes, which included 6-foot-6 center Elsa Lemmil\u00e4<\/a>. Notre Dame out-rebounded Ohio State 36-31, not bad for a team that finished the season with a negative .7 rebounding margin to their names.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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