All over again: Notre Dame loses to TCU, falls in Sweet 16 for fourth straight season

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Hannah Hidalgo bowed her head and stared at the court in the corner of the floor at Legacy Arena. The Notre Dame sophomore, outspoken about her faith as any student-athlete with a platform like hers, was probably saying a prayer.

Not that she needed one at that time; Notre Dame was up by two points at halftime, but the Fighting Irish were up through two quarters the last time they played TCU. Heck, they were up through three quarters back then too — just like they were Saturday in Birmingham.

And just like Nov. 29 in the Cayman Islands Classic, Notre Dame lost this one too.

The No. 2 seed Horned Frogs beat the No. 3 Fighting Irish, 71-62, to advance to Monday night’s regional championship game. For the fourth consecutive season, Notre Dame’s season ended in the Sweet 16 — one step shy of a chance to play for a spot in the Final Four.

“They went on a run, maintained their run, and we weren’t able to sustain their run,” Hidalgo said.

Run, run, run. It’s what Notre Dame likes to do but couldn’t do enough of vs. the Horned Frogs.

Hidalgo, a two-time First Team Associated Press All-American as a just a sophomore, had one the worst shooting games of her career at the worst time. She was 3-of-19 from the field, finishing with 15 points. She wasn’t alone in throwing up enough bricks to reconstruct the exterior of Legacy Arena; usually a sharpshooter, senior guard Sonia Citron only made 4 of her 15 attempts from the field. She scored 9 points.

That’s the way her college career came to a close. It hit her rather abruptly.

“Thinking now, I’m not even thinking about the game,” Citron said. “I’m just thinking about the people that I’ve met here, the relationships that I’ve formed, the friendships that I’ve formed.”

Many of those relationships are with players who also played their final collegiate game in Birmingham. The careers of Maddy Westbeld, Liatu King and Liza Karlen are out the window, too. And maybe even that of senior guard Olivia Miles, who has an extra year of eligibility but has not said whether or not she’ll use it. Three of those four players, Westbeld, King and Miles, did everything they could to keep playing.

Westbeld played admirable defense on 6-7 TCU center Sedona Prince, but she picked up her fourth foul in the first minute of the fourth quarter. She was in trouble in that regard for most of the game.

King was nearly perfect from the field for a second consecutive tournament game, shooting 8-of-9 to score 17 points. She also had 10 rebounds. Another double-double, marking a fitting end to her one season in South Bend. Every time you looked at the stat sheet she seemingly had double digits in both of those categories.

Miles, on a bum ankle injured in the first round of the tournament, sparked a 9-0 Notre Dame run that gave the Irish a nine-point lead early in the third quarter. She dribbled around her back and slid a feed down the lane to King for an easy layup then hit a contested three on the Irish’s next possession.

It was all Notre Dame at that time. But it was all TCU for too much of the second half thereafter — a frustratingly similar pattern of game flow to that of fourth months ago in the Caribbean.

It was TCU who proved Notre Dame to be infallible in that glorified exhibition, and it was TCU that ousted Notre Dame from the NCAA Tournament. The Horned Frogs, led by Louisville and LSU transfer Haily Van Lith, made more shots in crunch time. She scored 26. Prince had 21. The Frogs shot 50 percent as a team. The Irish shot 31.9 percent.

Notre Dame was better than TCU in many metrics, only turning the ball over 5 times to the Horned Frogs’ 15 giveaways among them. The Irish also won on the offensive glass, 17-7. Too often, though, the game bogged down into a half-court slog and Notre Dame just couldn’t make the shots required to put them in the clear for good. TCU could.

The latter is moving on. The former is going home unhappy — again.

“We had a great stretch in that third quarter defensively that we went up, but unfortunately tables turn, couldn’t make shots that we normally make,” Ivey said. “Couldn’t get the stops and just didn’t finish the game the way we wanted to.”