How Notre Dame women's basketball coach Niele Ivey overcame 'doubt,' 'fear' as NBA assistant

Niele Ivey reads five words every day. Multiple times per day. They make up a mantra by which the Notre Dame women’s basketball head coach lives.

“Let go and let God.”

She has them posted on her laptop. And in her office bathroom. She can’t help but read them, recite them and remember them. The phrase is permanently implanted in the 44-year-old coach’s mind. It’s a saying that defines her daily.

“There are a lot of things you can’t control,” Ivey recently said on the Hardwood Herstory podcast. “So let go, and let God handle it.”

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That’s what Ivey did when she tore her ACL twice during her college career at Notre Dame. She still started at point guard on the first ever Fighting Irish national championship-winning team.

Some things, though, require raw resolve. Internal strength. Help from a higher power is always welcomed if that’s what one believes in. Ivey does. But she also believes in herself. Self-belief is a trait that has carried her through her career both as a player and a coach.

Pregnancy disrupted Ivey’s professional playing career. She still lasted five seasons in the WNBA and raised a child, Jaden, who went on to get selected by the Detroit Pistons with the fifth overall pick in the 2022 NBA Draft. That doesn’t happen without stability and strength.

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After spending a dozen years as an assistant to Muffet McGraw at Notre Dame, Ivey felt compelled to stretch herself in 2019. She needed to grow someplace other than where she called home for upward of two decades. She accepted a position with the Memphis Grizzlies, becoming the first Black female assistant coach in NBA history.

There was a sense of not belonging tied to that. It was another time when it wasn’t enough to exclusively let go and let God. Ivey needed to dig deep within herself.

“I definitely struggled early on with the doubt and the fear of ‘am I good enough?'” Ivey said on the podcast. “I was entering into an entire organization of people I did not know. I played at Notre Dame and was a part of the South Bend community for 15 to 20 years. To go into a community of strangers, they didn’t know me or who I was, I just kind of walked in there. So I was very uncomfortable.”

Discomfort was exactly what she was looking for. She had felt it before when she tore her ACL. And when reality struck that she’d be raising a child much sooner than she anticipated. Some things are worth fighting for. The national title. A future for her son. Success as a pioneer at the highest level of basketball.

So, she fought.

“Don’t listen to the doubt,” Ivey said. “Don’t listen to those thoughts. They’re always going to creep up no matter if you’re Michael Jordan or Sheryl Swoopes. You have to know and be confident in who you are as a person and understand and know your value and know your worth.”

It wasn’t long before NBA fans were asking Ivey for photos and autographs, just as they would for rising Grizzlies star Ja Morant. Two trailblazers in their own ways. Morant is still paving his path in the league. Ivey is back home at Notre Dame. Now, she calls the shots. She guided the Irish to the Sweet 16 in March after Notre Dame failed to make the previous two NCAA Tournaments.

That didn’t happen overnight.

“My strength and learning how to fight through adversity, that’s part of my journey that I’d like to share,” Ivey said. “I had to lean on my family and my faith in myself. I really had to understand what confidence was because I had to bring it to the table in a lot of areas. I had to work really hard to get to this point. Nothing comes easy.”