Three observations from Notre Dame women's basketball loss to Louisville

It just wasn’t Notre Dame’s day.

The Fighting Irish knew it wouldn’t be easy. They knew they’d have to play their best basketball to have a chance on the road against No. 3 Louisville on Sunday. Not easy proved to be an understatement, and Notre Dame had anything but its best basketball.

The Cardinals easily handled the visiting Irish, 73-47.

Notre Dame only trailed by one after the first quarter and even led briefly at the beginning of the second. Then Louisville put the pedal down, and the Irish couldn’t keep up — especially with a shorthanded bench. Junior forward Sam Brunelle injured her shoulder in the second quarter and did not return. Head coach Niele Ivey said the original diagnosis is just a sprain, but it was enough to leave the Irish with six available scholarship players for over half the game.

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Such a short bench against a top-five team that prides itself on depth and contributions from up and down the lineup is not a recipe for an upset victory. Ivey didn’t want to make excuses, though.

“No matter what happens — foul trouble, six people healthy, five people healthy — the one thing we have to bring is our competitiveness, our toughness and our willingness to fight,” Ivey said. “I didn’t really feel like we had that. When things started going their way and we hit adversity, we didn’t stay composed. We lost our composure.”

BOX SCORE: Louisville 73, Notre Dame 47

Indeed, the Irish had more issues than just a short bench. Here are three observations from their loss.

1. Second worst shooting performance of season

Forget the No. 3 team in the country. It would be a stretch to say Notre Dame could have beaten anyone on its schedule with the way it shot the ball Sunday.

The Irish finished with a team shooting percentage of 31.7%, their second worst mark of the season. Notre Dame came close to setting a new low, which still stands as the 31.0% it shot in a 19-point loss to UConn, the only other opponent to beat the Irish by more than five points this season.

Notre Dame is not a three-point shooting team. The Irish went into Sunday’s game ranked No. 10 in the ACC in three-pointers made, yet they still resorted to throwing up shots from beyond the arc against the Cardinals. Hardly any of them went in. Notre Dame shot 2-of-22 (9.1%) from deep.

“I would have never guessed in a million years to only shoot 2-for-22 from three with this group,” Ivey said. “We definitely missed Sam and her ability to stretch the floor. We really missed her today.”

Notre Dame men’s basketball

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Not one Irish player had a strong shooting day. Senior guard Dara Mabrey went 0-of-8 from the field and 0-of-5 from three for the second time in the last three games. She had the same exact stat line in Notre Dame’s loss to Florida State on Feb. 6.

“Unfortunately she hasn’t shot the ball well the last couple of games,” Ivey said. “But I always have confidence she’s going to find it again.”

Freshman combo guard Sonia Citron led the Irish with 13 points, but she shot 6-of-17 from the floor. Behind Citron, freshman point guard Olivia Miles and sophomore forward Maddy Westbeld attempted the most shots with 13 apiece. They combined to make just nine of the 26.

There was a stretch in which Notre Dame missed 13 of 14 shots as a team. Nothing worked.

2. Irish lose inside battle

Notre Dame played a zone defense for much of the afternoon yet still surrendered 36 points in the paint. At one point in the third quarter, Louisville nearly had as many points in the paint (32) as Notre Dame had total points (37).

In a game that was largely played in the shaded region on both ends of the floor, Notre Dame did not attempt its first free throw until midway through the third quarter. So not only were the Irish not making shots, they weren’t making a point to be aggressive offensively.

Graduate senior center Maya Dodson only attempted six shots in 36 minutes. She made three of them, finishing with eight points and nine rebounds. She picked up two first-half fouls which might have altered her mindset, but she has to play a larger role when Notre Dame is down to six players on the road against one of the best teams in the nation.

Ivey said that was a lapse in the team’s execution.

“I didn’t think offensively we really followed the game plan of throwing the ball inside,” Ivey said. “That’s something I stressed a lot. Try to find ways to do that. For some reason, we didn’t execute the game plan. We didn’t go through with the thought process of getting the ball inside.”

3. Olivia Miles has tough time in hostile environment

There have been many games this season in which Miles does not look like a freshman. Sunday was not one of those games. For just the third time this season and first time since a Nov. 26 loss to Georgia, Miles finished with more turnovers (three) than assists (two).

She scored 11 points, but she didn’t look like her usual confident self. She looked more hesitant to make plays as the Notre Dame deficit grew by the minute, and some frustration definitely seemed to set in by the time the game got out of hand in the third quarter.

Louisville sophomore guard Hailey Van Lith outplayed her counterpart with 16 points.

“With her being so young, these are firsts moments in these types of environments,” Ivey said. “That’s never easy to go through. Sometimes you have growing pains that you have to learn from. It’s never easy. She’s going to be in really hostile environments for the rest of her career, so just have to learn from it.”