Niele Ivey reveals her halftime speech to Notre Dame leading to second half blowout of Duke

Now the top-ranked team in the Women’s AP Top 25 Poll, Notre Dame is going to get every team’s best shot moving forward. Head coach Niele Ivey knows that, and against Duke, her team was able to deal with an early run of success by the Blue Devils.

In the end, just looking at the final score, Notre Dame won by 15 points. However, for large portions of the game, it was much closer than that and the Irish began to pull away in the second half. That, likely, had to do with Ivey’s halftime speech, which she shared some insight into after the game.

“I talked to the team about us not really playing our style,” Niele Ivey said. “I talked about how we kind of dictated everything as far as like our turnovers. We weren’t really playing like us. So, I talked about we’ve got to fix us. That was handling the pressure, getting defensive stops, and taking care of the ball. I didn’t feel that we had that in the first half.”

Duke jumped out to an early lead, finishing the first quarter up 19-16. In the second quarter, the Notre Dame defense clamped down on the Blue Devils, though the Irish continued to struggle on offense at that point in the game.

“And I talked about just really focusing on being better defensively, coming out with more energy,” Ivey said. “And I thought that was more coming from us that we needed to step our intensity level up and that’s what they did. Proved right because they came out 17 to one with their defense, but yeah, just talked about more fixing the things that we need to do as a unit.”

Notre Dame had an excellent third quarter. The Irish would win that quarter 21-8. That quick start to the second half, likely driven by what head coach Niele Ivey had emphasized in the locker room, was all they would need to ultimately win and knock off a good Duke team. Hannah Hidalgo led the way in scoring for the Irish, putting up 19 of their 64 points. Sonia Citron, meanwhile, was also excellent. She finished with 15 points, seven rebounds, and two assists.

With the win, Notre Dame remained unbeaten in ACC play. It also gave the Irish a two-game lead on NC State with just four games remaining. It also pushed Duke to three games behind the Irish.

Niele Ivey reacts to No. 1 ranking in NCAA Tournament committee Top 16 reveal

In the NCAA Tournament selection committee’s reveal for the Top 16 women’s teams at this point in the season, Notre Dame came out with the No. 1 ranking. For Niele Ivey, it’s an exciting honor but the task is far from over.

“My heart was beating fast on that one because it’s never happened for us. The embrace and the cheers, that was different. This group, we’ve never experienced that. So, I thought that was a special moment,” Ivey said.

“Then, I was like ‘Okay, game.’ You can feel it for a second and then realize there’s a big task ahead of you. But that’s a special moment I’ll always have with this team.”

Next, Notre Dame is set to make a road trip to play Miami. After that, the Irish have another important game against NC State.