BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — After a disappointing finish in the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament earlier this month, Notre Dame women’s basketball coach Niele Ivey had a week of hard practices to refocus her team and get the Fighting Irish ready for a run in March Madness.
It seems to have worked so far.
Notre Dame (28-5), the No. 3 seed in Region 3, blitzed past 14th-seeded Stephen F. Austin, 106-54, and sixth-seeded Michigan, 76-55, in the first two rounds of the NCAA Division I tournament. Next up for the Irish is a regional semifinal against second-seeded TCU (33-3) at 1 p.m. Eastern on Saturday at Legacy Arena.
The second semifinal at the Birmingham venue, set for 3:30, is between a pair of Southeastern Conference programs as fifth-seeded Tennessee (24-9) tangos with top-seeded Texas (33-3). ABC will televise both games, with each a rematch from the regular season, and the winners meet Monday for a spot in next weekend’s Final Four in Tampa, Florida.
If the Irish aren’t ready for coach Mark Campbell’s Horned Frogs, a transfer-heavy team that features fifth-year senior guard Hailey Van Lith and swept the Big 12’s regular-season and tournament titles, they won’t be able to blame Ivey.
“She made practice really hostile and really intense, and she challenged us,” Notre Dame guard Olivia Miles said Friday of her coach’s regimen, “so it was really good for us.”
The Horned Frogs already had the Irish’s attention after beating them in a Thanksgiving tournament in the Cayman Islands. The Irish, who blew a 14-point third-quarter lead on the way to that 76-68 loss on Nov. 29, reviewed video of that game this week as they prepared for TCU, which is on a 12-game winning streak that dates to early February.
“I was just cringing. I was, like, ‘I can’t even watch this,'” Miles said. “Coach Ivey showed it to us for a specific reason. She showed it to us to ignite something in us, to make us mad, to see how we were playing and how we’ve been playing recently. So it showed a lot of growth, but it was definitely hard to watch for sure.”
The Irish had just six healthy players for that game, with veteran posts Liza Karlen and Maddy Westbeld among those who were sidelined at the time. Both are back and will give Ivey more depth to throw against TCU star Sedona Prince, who had 20 points and 20 rebounds in the November win.
“Definitely going to rely on that,” Ivey said, “and happy that we have a healthier roster than the last time we played them.”
Miles has had a few extra days to let her left ankle heal. She hurt it in Notre Dame’s first-round win, and while she played two days later, she wasn’t her normal self.
“I practiced yesterday, so it’s feeling better,” the AP All-America second-team selection said Friday. “But my performance team is so good. They’ve been helping me to rehab. You know, keeping me on track, making sure I’m wearing a brace, making sure I’m icing, stim, whatever it may be. They’ve helped me a lot.”
Tennessee Athletics photo by Kate Luffman / Tennessee’s Alyssa Latham shoots as Texas forward Taylor Jones defends during an SEC regular-season game on Jan. 23 in Austin.Tennessee first-year head coach Kim Caldwell was happy that she’ll be on the sideline for the Lady Volunteers’ rematch with Texas, which shared the SEC regular-season title with South Carolina (each won against the other at home) before losing to the Gamecocks in the league championship game.
The Longhorns earned a hard-fought 80-76 victory against the Lady Vols on Jan. 23 in Austin, but Caldwell missed that matchup while recovering from giving birth to her son.
“I was not very involved in the prep on that one. A little bit busy,” Caldwell said. “But, you know, it was interesting to sit at home and watch it and to yell at your team through the TV like a fan as opposed to a coach. We did go back and watch the film and just treated it like a normal game prep.”
Caldwell was also happy to be back in Birmingham, a city where she has already enjoyed some hoops success. She coached West Virginia’s Glenville State, her alma mater, to the Division II women’s national championship in 2022, although that game was held at a different venue — the Birmingham CrossPlex — than Saturday’s will be.
Tennessee hired Caldwell last spring after she led Marshall to the NCAA tourney in her first season as a D-I head coach but the Thundering Herd lost in the first round. Caldwell’s first two wins in March Madness joined a long list of them for the Lady Vols, who are in the Sweet 16 for a record-extending 37th time.
The eight-time national champions got there with a 101-66 win against 12th-seeded South Florida in the first round and an 82-67 win against fourth-seeded site host Ohio State in the second round, a victory sealed by up-tempo, press-heavy Tennessee’s second-half surge last Sunday night.
“I would like to think we’re peaking at the right time,” Caldwell said. “I think that’s the beautiful thing about March Madness. You have to play great for six games, and that is what it is. I do think our last two games are the best basketball we have played. It’s looked the way I want to it look.
“Again, you can’t take a breath. You have to continue to go forward, and you never know what you are going to get. So you have to just hope that that momentum continues.”
Texas coach Vic Schaefer thought he was done with the SEC for at least a while after the league tourney wrapped up on March 9, but it only took a trip to the Sweet 16 for a conference opponent to pop up again.
“I do think when you get in the NCAA tournament, you think, ‘OK, thank goodness you get out of the SEC and you don’t have to go against those people,’ because you have so much respect and admiration for everybody in our league,” he said. “Then these things happen. I mean, they go into Ohio State, and they thumped them. They played really good. Those kids play so hard.”