What to know, how to watch Ole Miss vs. Notre Dame in NCAA Tournament

Ole Miss head coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin made it known exactly how she feels about her team’s matchup against Notre Dame. She spoke her mind about it Sunday before Monday’s 2 p.m. ET tipoff.

“Listen, I know they’ve got six, seven players, but they just won a conference championship, and I’ve got 12 and we didn’t,” she said. “We’re not going to make this as if they’re the underdogs. They’re the 2 seed, we’re the 7 seed. As far as we’re concerned, they have the pressure, we don’t.”

A loss for either team would be a step back. Both programs made the Sweet 16 a year ago. That’s what’s on the line today at Purcell Pavilion. Here’s what you need to know about the second-round matchup.

No. 2 seed Notre Dame women’s basketball vs. No. 7 seed Ole Miss

• Teams: No. 2 seed Notre Dame (27-6) and No. 7 seed Ole Miss (24-8)
• Head coaches: Niele Ivey (88-31, fourth year at Notre Dame); Yolett McPhee-McCuin (103-83, 6th year at Kent State; 197-146 overall, 11th year)
• Date: March 25, 2024
• Location: Purcell Pavilion (South Bend, Ind.)
• Time: 2 p.m. ET
• Television: ESPN
• TV broadcasters: Sam Gore and Tamika Catchings
• Radio: 99.9 WQLQ-FM in South Bend
• Radio broadcaster: Sean Stires and Karen Keyes

Matchup notables

• Notre Dame beat No. 15 seed Kent State, 81-67, in the first round. Ole Miss defeated No. 10 seed Marquette, 67-55.

• As McPhee-McCuin alluded to, Notre Dame is down to a rotation of six or seven players because of injuries. Ivey put seven on the floor against the Golden Flashes, but the seventh, graduate student forward Becky Obinma, only played three minutes. She has not factored into Notre Dame’s rotation in the last month-plus and will continue to remain benched unless the Irish get into foul trouble. They did against Kent State; three players finished with four fouls.

• Ole Miss will try to exploit Notre Dame’s low roster number with 94 feet of physicality. That’s the name of the Rebels game on any given night, but if they pull it off as close to perfection as possible Monday advancing gets tougher and tougher for the home favorite Irish.

• “What we try to do is make teams adjust to how we play, which is up and down, fast, and really make you have to work for every single bucket that you get,” McPhee-McCuin said. “I think naturally it wears teams down.”

• Notre Dame can play a 94-foot game of its own led by freshman point guard Hannah Hidalgo, but the Irish have to be much more conscious of how aggressive they are in doing that because of the limited rotation.

• “We can’t play as freely as we want to,” junior guard Sonia Citron said. “Definitely have to adjust just because we can’t afford any fouls, especially early on in the game, so I’ll always tell my teammates be smart in the first half and then maybe second half if you have zero or if you have one foul you can play more aggressive on, you know, just play more aggressive because we can’t really afford people to get one or two fouls in the first half. So, we definitely got to play smarter and just adjust our game a little bit.”

• Ole Miss has played four ranked teams at the time of tipoff. The Rebels lost all of them, including a six-point loss to Louisville and a 29-point drubbing to No. 1 South Carolina. Notre Dame also lost to South Carolina by 29 points, but that was way back in the season-opener on Nov. 6. The Gamecocks beat the Rebels in Columbia, S.C., on Feb. 4.

• The Rebels are led by double-digit scorers Marquesha Davis (14.3), Madison Scott (12.7) and Kennedy Todd-Williams (10.4). Ole Miss is No. 12 nationally in rebounding margin at plus-8.3. Notre Dame is 55th in the same stat at plus-5.1. That disparity is certainly something to monitor Monday, especially with Notre Dame playing without senior center Kylee Watson.

• Keeping Ole Miss off the offensive glass will be paramount for the Irish. Notre Dame is the superior offensive team averaging 79.2 points per game to the Rebels’ 68.9, but Ole Miss can make things interesting with extra possessions.