Results wise, the opening two weeks of the Irish Women’s Hoops season have gone about as well as we could have hoped. Four wins by an average of 42 points are a decent way to kick off any campaign. Taking a closer look, we saw Olivia Miles earn ACC and National Player of the Week honors in her return from an ACL tear. Hannah Hidalgo took home the following week’s ACC PotW award and looks comfortable with her new backcourt-mate. Freshman Kate Koval is filling the stat sheet with points, rebounds, assists and blocks in her first taste of college ball. Sonia Citron returned from a minor injury and her shooting, secondary playmaking, and wing defense still look great. Emma Risch and Cass Prosper both look like solid role players capable of knocking down shoots when needed.

The schedule hasn’t been tough, but facing a Big Ten team like Purdue on their own floor isn’t nothing. James Madison is a likely tournament team too. Neither team could lay a glove on the Irish. Sadly, not everything is perfect in Purcell Pavilion. The injury report is growing despite Citron’s return to the lineup after missing the opener. Liza Karlen hurt her foot in the exhibition game and has yet to make her regular season Irish debut. Liatu King left the game against JMU with a head injury and missed the trip to Lafayette. Two other players entered the season injured and have yet to play one of whom is a projected top-10 WNBA Draft pick. That left the Irish with seven healthy bodies to face the Leopards. There were also some very slight concerns with the half court offense in the first couple games. That said, four blowout wins with two coming on the road is just about all you can ask for considering what’s coming up.

Two All-American Point Guards: Very Cool, Very Fun

It’s not a huge surprise that having two of the most exciting players the sport playing together would lead to some entertaining basketball. Through four games, it’s possible the Miles/Hidalgo backcourt (we need a nickname for this) has been even more fun than expected. Head coach Niele Ivey deserves some credit for making things fit so seamlessly from the jump. Miles usually takes lead ball handling duties when the two share the court. The hope was that both players would take advantage of the space created by the other, and through four games that’s happening on more possessions than not. When defenses collapse to stop one of their drives, the other can find space for an open look from deep. Both guards have identical 9/19 (47%) shooting lines from three point range. Miles came into the season as a career 25% shooter from three. That’s a massive 22% improvement! Hidalgo shot 34% from deep last season so her numbers are up significantly as well.

Those jumps are a testament to how well they’ve adapted to the new offensive setup as well as the pair’s offseason work (Miles touched on this in her Rakes Report Podcast interview). If they can keep up the hot shooting (we’re still in small sample size territory), it will very much be a pick-your-poison scenario for opposing defenses. The extra space shows up inside the arc too. Opponents can’t double team Miles in pick-and-roll since she’s such a good passer and ball handler. That gives her more space to get into the paint to score or set up teammates. Instead of having to beat set defenses off the dribble, Hidalgo can get a running start, catch a pass from Miles with her defender trailing, and either pull up in the midrange or get to the rim and finish before help arrives. Add some nice shooting from Citron, Risch, and Prosper, and quality post play from the bigs (more on that later), and you’ve got one of the best offenses in the country.

Of course, the area where these two really thrive is in transition. Instead of trying to paint the picture with words, feel free to just sit back and enjoy a limited selection of Irish fast breaks.

These two are truly appointment viewing. There’s at least five plays like this every night. Sorry, here’s one more.

New Bigs Looking Good

On the inside, two new faces are quickly getting up to speed. Liatu King, the All ACC transfer from Pitt, looks completely settled with her new squad. She opened the season with back-to-back double-doubles and is currently shooting over 75% from the field. As expected, she’s cleaning up against single coverage inside with defenses focused on the guards. She understands the assignment on the break and has been rewarded with easy layups when running the floor. King’s also learned a few lessons from Hidalgo and Miles and is throwing some mildly reckless (complimentary) outlet passes herself.

Unfortunately, she left the JMU game in the second half with a possible head injury and completely missed the game at Lafayette. She’s presumably in concussion protocol and her status for Saturday’s game against USC is unclear.

With other post players Liza Karlen, Kaylee Watson, and Maddy Westbeld all out with injury, five-star freshman Kate Koval was thrown into the deep end to start her college career. Thankfully, she seems to swimming pretty well. We’ve seen a few freshman mistakes like unnecessary fouls and careless turnovers against Mercyhurst and Purdue, but she’s mostly looked the part of a very good college center. Koval’s block (5 per game) and assist (3 per game) numbers in particular are not the norm for freshman bigs. Almost more importantly, she had just one foul against an admittedly undersized Lafayette in a game where she grabbed 19 boards (8 offensive) and had seven blocks. Even experienced upperclassmen can struggle to play great defense and grab offensive rebounds without fouling. She earned ACC Rookie of the Week and National Freshman of the Week honors so her skills haven’t gone unnoticed outside of South Bend. We’ll see if she can keep it up as the competition level increases (and that’s happening soon), but it’s hard not be excited her progress thus far.

Looking Ahead to the Trojans

This year’s schedule gave the Irish a chance to get their legs under them before getting into the meat of the season. If you were to pick nits, there were some minor issues with the half court offense in the first couple games. The turnover numbers were a bit higher than you’d like. The assist numbers were a bit low and players were a bit too quick to force a tough shot instead of moving the ball. None of that is too surprising considering the two lead guards hadn’t played together before. They also scored a number of unassisted driving layups against overmatched defenders. Thankfully, those issues mostly disappeared against James Madison and Lafayette. Apart from the injuries, it’s hard to have any complaints thus far.

On Saturday, the level of difficulty will take a major step up when Notre Dame travels to Los Angeles to face Southern Cal. USC, currently ranked third in the nation, added some big names to their roster after reaching the Elite Eight in 2024. Like the Irish, the Trojans have an All-American sophomore point guard. As a freshman, Juju Watkins basically ran the show by herself. Her 42.7% usage rate was the highest in college basketball. By comparison, a probably overworked Hidalgo’s was 31.4% last year. Leading the country in usage rate isn’t really a good thing. Having any single player doing so much, even one as great as Watkins, is generally unsustainable for a team with title aspirations. If she has an off game, you’re probably going to lose not to mention the risk of that player running out of gas late in games at the end of a long season.

To help fix that, head coach Lindsay Gottlieb added a number of big pieces to her roster. The most notable signing was power forward and LA native Kiki Iriafen who moved south from Stanford. Iriafen earned All-PAC 12 honors and averaged 17/11 last season. She is projected to be a top-5 pick in the 2025 WNBA Draft. Southern Cal also picked up Talia von Oelhoffen from Oregon State via the portal. The senior guard averaged 10 points and five assists for the Beavers last year. In addition to finding transfers aided by the breakup of the PAC 12, Gottlieb inked the consensus top recruiting class in the country. The Trojans signed six players, five of whom were top-100 recruits. Guards Kennedy Smith and Kayleigh Heckel were both rated in the top-20 and are the third and fourth highest scorers for SC through four games. Each averages around 10 points per game. Fellow freshman guard Avery Howell is also getting rotation minutes at this point in the season. Returning from last year’s team, starting center Rayah Marshall anchors the team inside. The senior averaged a double-double in 2023/24.

Like the Irish, the Trojans are 4-0, but have faced a tougher schedule than the ND thus far. Southern Cal opened the season in Paris against #20 Ole Miss and were somewhat fortunate to escape with a 68-66 win. USC trailed late, but clutch free throws, offensive rebounds and Ole Miss turnovers got the Trojans over the line. Since returning stateside, they’ve blown out overmatched opponents in Cal Poly, Cal State Northridge, and Santa Clara.

When Saturday Comes

The potential Watkins v. Hidalgo matchup is enticing, but I expect ND to change up the defensive assignments against Juju. At 6’2, Watkins is eight inches taller than Hidalgo. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Miles (5’10) or Citron (6’1) as Juju’s primary defender. There’s also a chance ND rotates all three of Hidalgo, Miles, and Citron onto Watkins and gives her different looks throughout the game. On the inside, having King back would be a huge help. The All-Conference transfer would match up well with her USC counterpart. Sophomores Prosper and Risch were both highly rated recruits and have more experience than the SC freshmen Smith and Heckel. At center, Rayah Marshall is a big step up in difficulty at both ends for Koval, but the ND freshman has passed every test thus far.

It’s hard to feel too confident about a prediction either way in this one. Watkins is a special player on capable of winning a big game on her own. She did it multiple times last season against top opposition. In addition to her abilities on offense, Juju’s length could give Miles and Hidalgo problems when trying to finish inside. That would allow the rest of SC’s defense avoid helping and gum up the Irish in the half court. A big factor will be whether Liatu King is able to play. If King is unavailable, the Irish would have Koval as the only true post player to deal with two talented and experienced bigs. Prosper would likely move to the four and would face a daunting matchup with Iriafen. Prosper or Koval getting into foul trouble would be a nightmare scenario and likely doom the Irish if King can’t go.

If the Irish are to win on Saturday, King (if healthy) and Koval playing the Trojan post players to a draw would be a huge help. The undermanned Irish don’t need to dominate inside; they just need to hold their own. If the matchups go how I expect with Miles and Citron spending the lion’s share of possessions guarding Watkins, Hidalgo would be free dial up the pressure against the rest of the SC backcourt. An aggressive Hidalgo could lead to a freshman guard having extremely bad day. Even the more experienced Talia von Oelhoffen struggled in her matchup with Hidalgo in the Sweet 16 last March shooting just 1/7 from the field. She did have nine assists in the game, but most were to All-American center Reagan Beers (now at Oklahoma) who was facing an Irish front court that lacked a true center after Watson’s injury in the ACC Tournament. If Koval avoids foul trouble, that won’t be the case on Saturday.

If the rest of the SC guards struggle with Hidalgo’s pressure and the Trojans don’t get a bunch of easy buckets in the post, ND could live with Juju still getting hers on offense. It will just be up to the Irish guards to force her to make contested shots and be somewhat less efficient than usual. Making Watkins work on defense will also be helpful here. Chasing Miles, Citron or Hidalgo all over the court on defense should negatively impact her on offense. Despite the somewhat depleted roster, a high tempo, up-and-down game should favor ND. Pushing the pace and forcing the Trojans to match it could lead to turnovers by the SC freshmen and give Miles and Hidalgo lots of transition opportunities. Lastly, everything said above about Watkins being good enough to win a game like this by herself applies to both Hidalgo and Miles. A scenario where one of the Irish stars takes over and outplays the Trojan All American is another a path to victory for Notre Dame. Hedging a bit, I lean toward an Irish win if King plays and a Trojan victory if she’s out. The game tips at 4:00 ET on NBC and will lead right into the ND football game against Army.