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Maddy Westbeld returns for Notre Dame in Irish win at No. 17 North Carolina

IMG_9992by:Tyler Horka•01/05/25•

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Notre Dame guard Hannah Hidalgo drives against North Carolina. (Photo courtesy of Notre Dame athletics)

Things keep coming together for Notre Dame women’s basketball, a squad that hasn’t lost since November. The No. 3 Fighting Irish (12-2) knocked off the No. 17 North Carolina Tar Heels (13-3) in Chapel Hill on Sunday afternoon, 76-66.

And they welcomed the return of their most veteran player, fifth-year graduate senior forward Maddy Westbeld.

Notre Dame was elite but not deep early in the season. Now, with the season debuts of Westbeld and fellow graduate senior forward Liza Karlen in the last month, the Irish have multiple championship-level pieces at most positions.

Westbeld only played 13 minutes in her first game of her final season of eligibility. She didn’t take any shots. It was very similar to when Karlen played 10 minutes and scored just 4 points in her first appearance of the season against UConn on Nov. 12.

There will be games when Westbeld and/or Karlen go off for the Irish. They might even be the best player in any given game. But they don’t ever need to be. That’s because Notre Dame has two of the best guards in the game, and they were in their bags yet again.

And their bags are stuffed to the brim with tricks like Halloween pillowcases.

Hidalgo and Miles combined to make 10 three-pointers. The former finished with 24 points and the latter had 19. They were the main facilitators, as usual, too, with 10 assists between them, also five apiece. Pitt transfer Liatu King cleaned up on the glass with a game-high 15 rebounds.

Notre Dame led by as many as 14 points. North Carolina only led for 1:47 of game time. The Tar Heels made some second-half runs, multiple times cutting their deficit to single-digits and getting the home crowd more involved, but each time the Irish remained composed, even on the road, and withstood the comeback attempts in a ways they couldn’t in their only two losses of the season at the Cayman Islands Classic.

Notre Dame has four ranked wins this season now, and all of them have been by double digits. Next up is a home game against Wake Forest (7-6, 0-2 ACC) on Thursday at 5 p.m. ET.

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