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Sharpshooting senior guards Olivia Miles, Sonia Citron lead Notre Dame over Pitt

IMG_9992by:Tyler Horka•02/13/25•

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Notre Dame senior guard Olivia Miles. (Photo courtesy of Notre Dame athletics)

There were plenty of individual performances from Notre Dame at Pitt on Thursday night that, without seeing the final score, would leave you wondering if the Fighting Irish hiccuped and eft themselves susceptible to an upset against one of the lesser teams in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

National Player of the Year candidate Hannah Hidalgo couldn’t find the bottom of the basket like she normally does. She shot 3 of 17 from the field. Key bench players Liza Karlen and Kate Koval couldn’t find it at all for most of the game. Even in Notre Dame’s regular rotation of eight players, neither of them chipped in with a single point until Karlen did late in the fourth quarter.

Graduate senior forward Maddy Westbeld did not get on the score sheet until the fourth quarter. Junior guard Cassandre Prosper only had two buckets, one more than Westbeld.

So who the heck scored? How did Notre Dame get out of the Petersen Events Center with a 88-57 victory, their 17th in a row and one that ran the overall record for the No. 2 team in the country to 22-2 and the ACC mark to 13-0?

Senior guards Olivia Miles and Sonia Citron.

Miles made a career-high 8 three-pointers on 10 attempts. That tied an all-time program record that has stood since it was set by Sheila McMillen in 1998. She had a game-high 28 points, her highest point total in any game since recording a career-best 30 against Boston College on Jan. 30, 2022. Citron, meanwhile, scored 22 points on 8-of-9 shooting overall and 4-of-5 on three-point attempts.

There’s so much that goes into winning a 17th consecutive game. It’s not particularly easy to win any game on the road in ACC play, either, even against opponents like Pitt (11-15, 3-10). You’ve typically got to win the rebounding battle, which Notre Dame narrowly did, 39-33, against the pesky Panthers. Points in the paint and fast break points usually tell the story of the game, too, because when a team has more of both of those things it’s a sign of domination and dictation of game flow. Notre Dame succeeded that way.

Heck, Hidalgo’s 7 steals are absolutely worth mentioning. She wasn’t herself offensively but she was every bit of herself defensively, and then some. But in this one, it came back to the shotmaking of Miles and Citron. The more of their attempts that went in, the more Notre Dame completely broke the will of the home team. These Irish can break the will of anybody, even No. 13 Duke (20-5, 11-2 ACC) if they play at their absolute best or anything close to it.

Plain, simple, period.

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