Notre Dame survives Olivia Miles knee injury, beats Louisville, wins ACC regular-season title
Don’t you love it when a plan comes together?
In another classic matchup between two fierce ACC rivals, No. 10 Notre Dame trailed by nine points at halftime, played without its best player the entire second half, yet still clawed from behind and won 68-65 at the Yum! Center in Louisville to cap the regular season.
The Notre Dame win coupled with a loss by Duke (14-4) Sunday earned the Irish (15-3) the outright ACC regular-season title and the No. 1 seed in this week’s conference tournament.
The gutsy and impressive comeback win didn’t come without a price.
Late in the second quarter, Irish sophomore all-everything guard Olivia Miles suffered a right knee injury, never returned to the game and had a heavy wrap over her entire leg on the bench during the second half.
Her status for both the ACC and the NCAA tournaments is expected to be announced Monday as no updates were provided before the team loaded up for the return trip to South Bend.
The Irish needed a collective effort to replace their potential ACC and national player of the year candidate, and they got it.
Sophomore guard Sonia Citron scored nine of her season-high 27 points in the fourth quarter and freshman guard Cassandre Prosper scored all 11 of her points in the second half as Notre Dame turned a 33-24 halftime deficit into a three-point win.
After trailing the Cardinals for most of the afternoon — 29 minutes to be exact — Notre Dame finally took the lead for good with 5:30 left in the game when two Citron free throws gave the Irish a 54-53 lead.
Louisville (12-6) was tough to shake and had a late three-point attempt in the closing seconds that would’ve tied the game 66-66, but the shot missed badly.
Instead, two subsequent Prosper free throws pushed the Irish lead to 68-63 with six seconds left. Louisville scored at the buzzer and Notre Dame left town with a gutsy win and the ACC regular season title.
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How did they do that?
The road win didn’t seem likely when Miles went down with the injury. Miles remained on the court for several minutes before gingerly limping to the locker room under her own power.
In Miles’s absence, Notre Dame became rattled and actually fell behind 38-28 early in the third quarter. But with good defense and great work from Citron playing point guard, the Irish calmly and methodically cut into the lead, and then some.
With 14 clutch points on 7-of-11 shooting, Irish freshman guard KK Bransford was vital in the comeback win.
Junior forward Maddy Westbeld added 9 points and 5 rebounds on a day the Irish made only four three-pointers as a team.
The difference was in the defense. Notre Dame limited Louisville to only 20-of-58 shooting (34.5 percent) and held the Cardinals without a basket for a six-minute stretch of the fourth quarter.
As the No. 1 seed in the ACC Tournament, Notre Dame earned a double-bye and will open play Friday at 2 p.m. ET.
