Notre Dame Isn’t Wasting Any Time in Its Return to the Top

Olivia Miles was locked in. After grabbing the rebound from a missed midrange jumper by Maryland’s Abby Meyers near the free-throw line, the Notre Dame point guard’s eyes were latched onto the basket down floor. But even as she pushed the pace—dribbling the ball down the left sideline and passing multiple defenders on the fast-break opportunity—her impeccable vision was on full display. Miles always “knows exactly where her teammates are,” says fifth-year Fighting Irish guard Dara Mabrey. “We have this connection where I don’t even have to look at her eyes.”

As the sophomore sensation crossed midcourt, Mabrey was running down the left sideline for a potential corner three while freshman guard KK Bransford lagged slightly behind Miles before converging to the paint. Instead of landing an assist from one of her usual jaw-dropping, no-look passes, Miles crossed three-point line, took a diagonal angle to the paint while sidestepping the Terps’ Diamond Miller to convert a layup with an oncoming free throw opportunity and a passionate high-five from Skylar Diggins-Smith’s dad courtside.

With less than 50 seconds remaining in the Dec. 1 clash—one that included 15 lead changes—the eyes of more than 3,100 fans were glued to the court inside Purcell Pavilion at the Joyce Center. The acclaimed arena, featuring Notre Dame’s two national championship banners from 2001 and ’18 hanging from the rafters marking legendary coach Muffet McGraw’s regime, is ready to erupt. McGraw spent more than three decades activating greatness in her players, which includes the one pacing Notre Dame’s sideline, coach Niele Ivey. The former All-American point guard, along with legend Ruth Riley, helped secure the program’s first national title.

But Ivey was more than an elite player. She became one of McGraw’s greatest students of the game, spending stints as an Irish assistant (2007 to ’15) and associate head coach (’15 to ’19) before dashing to the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies to serve as an assistant. When McGraw decided to retire after the ’19–20 season, following two back-to-back Final Four appearances in ’18 and ’19 and the program’s first losing season in more than three decades, Ivey’s number was called to lead the program, and she didn’t take the challenge lightly. “There’s a lot of expectation that comes with following one of the greatest of all time,” Ivey says. With the game on the line, these are the moments Ivey, now in her third season as head coach, remembers while playing for and learning under McGraw.

However, the luck was not in favor of the Irish, who committed 18 turnovers in addition to the late-game heroics from Miles and Sonia Citron that night in December. In the final seconds, Miller sank a pull-up jumper at the buzzer, giving the Terrapins their first win against Notre Dame since 2007.

The loss had similar shades to the Irish’s Sweet 16 departure from last year’s tournament when they suffered a heartbreaking defeat to NC State following Raina Perez’s timely steal, go-ahead layup and free throws to close the curtains on the season. But it was a lesson that ignited the program’s hungry for more mentality. “We needed that punch in the face,” Miles says. “It’s still kind of scary to know we played that badly and lost by a buzzer beater.”

Since then Notre Dame has won six of its last seven, including three ACC victories with two on the road against Virginia Tech and Miami before winning at home against Boston College on New Year’s Day. Despite Sunday’s loss to then No. 22 North Carolina—a matchup in which the Irish committed 19 turnovers and were held to their lowest offensive output this season and a dismal 9.1% from beyond the arc—they’re still eager to reach the next tier of success in 2023. As Notre Dame (12–2) prepares to face Wake Forest in an ACC clash Thursday, the journey only gets more competitive. And for Ivey, it is imperative that her players maintain that hunger and dominance because the “target is on their backs now.” “It’s something they have not been used to. On any given night, anybody can win in the ACC.”

Before Ivey channels herself to lead the program, she first prays and meditates daily. When she has a little more time, she makes her way to visit the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes, an iconic shrine on the university’s campus. “It’s one of my favorite spots,” she says. From there, before meeting with her coaching staff, she peeks her head into the weight room to see what her players are doing before practice starts. Ivey is hoping to lead the program back to competing for national titles annually, anchored by two sophomores—Miles and Citron—junior Maddy Westbeld and two graduate students in Mabrey and Lauren Ebo.

When Ivey hits the floor for practice, things become fast-paced and intense. Miles knows it’s worth it to be a top team in the country.. “She’s hard on us. … She’s been in our shoes before,” Miles says. Dara, the youngest of the trio of Mabrey sisters who have donned the Irish uniform, echoed Miles’s sentiments. Her sister Michaela, or “Coach Mike,” is one of three assistants on Ivey’s staff, while her sister Marina currently plays for the WNBA’s Dallas Wings. For Dara, who became the all-time three-point shooter among her sisters this season, expectations are high. In the last 13 seasons, 10 of them have included a Mabry. “They both have rings and they’ve both seen success,” Dara says of her sisters. “On hard days where they are on my ass and chewing me out, it’s easy for me to trust the process.”

In those teaching moments, Ivey is walking in her purpose, reaping the benefits of getting to watch her players grow. It’s the same impetus McGraw had in developing and watching Ivey and the same desire that current and longtime Irish assistant Carol Owens felt when she recruited Ivey to Notre Dame. In Ivey’s first season as coach, in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, she led the Irish to a 10–10 mark and followed it up with a leap to 24–10 and tied for third in the ACC last season. “She’s turned the program around so quickly and a lot of it has to do with the relationships with athletes, her passion and her infectious energy,” Owens says. Ivey has witnessed a plethora of Final Four, Elite Eight and Sweet 16 appearances that included players like Diggins-Smith, Jewell Loyd, Kayla McBride, Natalie Achonwa, Arike Ogunbowale, Jackie Young and the Mabreys. But to reach college basketball’s pinnacle in April, the work must be done now. And Ivey believes the determinative factor that will aid her team in cutting down the nets in Dallas is pushing the pace offensively, rebounding and playing lights-out defensively.

Through 14 games this season, Notre Dame has already made strides, surpassing its pace, offensive rating, defensive rating and rebounding percentage from a season ago, according to HerHoopStats. “When you look at South Carolina winning last year’s championship, their defense was tenacious,” Ivey says. “That’s been my focus all year. In the UConn game [on Dec. 4], it was the first time I felt like we were locked in for 40 minutes. That’s what we need every game.”

As Ivey gets into the drills with her players during practice, Miles is an extension of the coach on the court. She is undoubtedly the face of the program, and her role is pivotal to Notre Dame’s success, despite being only a sophomore. When No. 5 steps on the court in an Irish uniform, wearing her iconic glasses, the level of grit infused with her competitiveness and passion for the game is relentless. It’s what makes her the fearless, unselfish player she is—always looking to impact the team. She plays with a Sue Bird–like vision and spent many years “reading her eyes” and studying how Bird read gaps during her high school years at Blair Academy, roughly 45 minutes from South Bend. Miles’s elite passing meshed with her quickness—which derives from her first love in soccer and watching greats like Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Neymar—has catapulted her to college basketball’s crème de la crème.

Miles captured the third triple double of her Irish career against Merrimack after garnering national attention in becoming the freshman man or woman to record a triple double in last year’s NCAA tournament. She’s only the second Notre Dame player to do so since Diggins-Smith did in 2011. “I thought it was just another day on the job and didn’t even know it was a record to be broken,” Miles says of last year’s performance. But even as she currently leads the program in points, rebounds, assists and steals, Miles is still growing. As a freshman, she was trying to figure things out with the offense in terms of pace, scoring opportunities and how to effectively distribute the ball to her teammates with fewer turnovers.

She spent the offseason getting stronger, being more aggressive and working on her perimeter and midrange shooting. It has paid off with increases in her effective field-goal percentage, percentage of points scored on two-pointers and two-pointers made per 40 minutes, according to HerHoopStats. Instead of getting down on herself, she remains confident in her skills this season and leans on the “mother-daughter-like relationship” with Ivey. “She knows all parts of being a point guard. … It’s one of the reasons I wanted to play for her,” Miles says.

While Miles portrays more of a quiet demeanor, do not be fooled. “I don’t yell and scream and I feel like a lot of people underestimate and overlook me,” she says. “Maybe it’s the glasses; I don’t know.” She compares herself to the NBA’s Trae Young, who can appear quiet until he’s lighting up the New York Knicks, for example, and silencing Madison Square Garden. “He’ll get into it with his environment sometimes, which is a little of how I am,” Miles says with a laugh. As she continues to grow and seeks to power the Irish on a deep tournament run, so does her leadership, something she credits to her teammate Mabrey. “Being the newbie and everyone looking at me to lead, she pushes me to be my best,” Miles adds. But like Miles, Mabrey’s excursion to South Bend has not come without sacrifices and obstacles.

During practice, Dara Mabrey finds herself looking up at Marina’s WNBA banner and Michaela’s Final Four banner as motivation. “They’re my role models,” she says. But with 1:07 to play in Sunday’s battle against the Tar Heels, the sharpshooting guard launched a surprising airball from beyond the arc before finishing the contest 3-for-15 from the field and 1-for-11 from three-point range. It’s not the outing she expected. But Mabrey is unfazed. Flash back to the Irish’s game against the Terrapins, when she went 0-for-6 in the first half and 1-for-7 from three-point range in the game. She prides herself on mental stability, something she spent many hours working on in 2020 and ’21. She spoke with her mental coach, Derek, about her performance in not losing confidence in herself. “He reminded me that all bad things come before the good, and the 0-for-8s come before the 8-for-8s,” she says.

While Mabrey heeds his advice and is aware of the ebbs and flows of the game, the goal is to keep playing no matter what. Her conversation with Derek was only a small piece to the bigger body of work she sacrificed during the offseason. She worked with her trainer in Los Angeles, building on her confidence to run the point guard position, ballhandling and midrange shooting as well as her lateral quickness and mobility on defense. “He had me pick up full-court on-ball pressure defensively and facing tight pressure when I crossed half court against boys who were a lot longer and athletic than me,” she says. “I had to find angles to navigate.”

Halfway through the season, Mabrey’s confidence has expanded. So in moments when she isn’t shooting the ball well or playing at her best, she gets a nice reminder from Coach Mike from the sideline or a long 4 a.m. text message from Marina, who is currently playing overseas for Famila Wuber Schio in Italy, about what she needs to do to improve. “Marina always tells me that I can’t make the next play if I’m stuck on the last one,” Mabrey says. “So, it’s nothing for her to tell me what I need to do to be better.” With guidance from her sisters and Ivey’s belief in her shooting ability, she maintains a Steph Curry–like mindset and a short-term memory on the court. “If I missed the first one, f— it,” she says. “You can guarantee I’m going to shoot the next one.”

That mentality also gives her the capacity to lift the heads of younger players like Miles when trouble arises. “When the game is tense, I tell [Olivia] to relax; it’s all good,” Mabrey says. “She’s our point guard, and I tell her that the ball is going to run through her hands on nearly every possession.”

With Notre Dame trailing by five and failing to score in the final 6:48 of the third quarter, UNC freshman Paulina Paris notched three of her 16 points, giving the Tar Heels an eight-point lead with close to six minutes to play in the final period. That’s until Miles found Citron for Notre Dame’s second made three-pointer and the last of the game, bringing the Irish’s deficit to 43–48. But that’s only a limited part to Citron’s value to the team. Citron, who entered the program with Miles as part of Ivey’s top-five recruiting class in 2021, is the team’s “Swiss army knife” in guarding the opposing team’s best player—like she did in defending UConn’s Azzi Fudd—coming up with timely steals, knocking down clutch buckets with the game on the line and diving on the floor loose balls and taking a charge. “I take pride in being able to do a bunch of stuff,” she says.

Citron, the 2022 ACC Freshman of the Year, is soft-spoken. The spotlight shines on Miles, Mabry and others. But Citron’s value to the program is monumental. “She can do it all,” Owens says. Like Miles, Citron, too, faced some growing pains in her first season. On different occasions, she found herself watching film, noticing that she was not aggressive enough on the court. “Coach Mike and Ivey yelled at me pretty often about that,” she recalls. But in Year 2, she has elevated her confidence and is an essential part of the Irish’s plan to go after a national title in ’23, putting her priority on “locking up the best player and being that elite defender,” she adds.

And for that, she’s considered the heartbeat of the team. “Olivia is the face, but Sonia is the heart and soul, like the unsung hero,” Ivey says. Miles, who previously played with Citron on Team USA, also agrees: “She’s one of the best players I’ve ever played with, super special.” When the Irish lost to NC State in last year’s tournament, she was the first to share how “teary-eyed” she was and how traumatizing the loss was for her and her teammates. In that moment, she learned the value of losing. “It teaches you way more than a win.”

Leading up to the Irish’s game against the Demon Deacons, Mabrey is certain to enjoy her oat milk latte from Starbucks, while Miles will continue to wear her favorite white Blair crewneck during warmups for a sense of peace before the game tips off—keeping consistency despite Sunday’s loss. Notre Dame’s schedule features three games—against Syracuse, Clemson and Virginia—in the next 11 days before a showdown against Florida State on Jan. 26 and a huge road test against the Wolfpack to close out the month.

As the weeks go by and the days draw to the tournament, Ivey hopes the lessons from the games—both inside Purcell Pavilion and on the road—mold and crystallize the team’s mentality to not settle for anything less than its absolute best. In doing so, it takes “consistency” and “collectiveness” as one unit,” Miles says. “Playing, eating, breathing and sleeping like national champions.”

And for Ivey, her goal to bring another Waterford Crystal ball to South Bend and raise another championship banner in the Pavilion is within reach. “We were one possession away from going to the Elite Eight last year,” she says. “There’s a lot of buzz for women’s basketball in South Bend. The sky’s the limit for us.”