Monday afternoon in Columbus, Ohio, two similar styles of basketball met in the Second Round of the NCAA Tournament. On one side, the No. 3 Ohio State Buckeyes, led by a speedy point guard who in only her second college season grabbed the attention of the country. The other featured No. 6 Notre Dame Fighting Irish, which boasted an equally quick point guard who has already been in that position for three years with similar pace and disruptiveness. In the end, there was a tiebreaker that the Fighting Irish take with them into the Sweet Sixteen — an unrelenting toughness forged in failure.
Rewind to November 15, 2025. Outside of Detroit, Michigan, the Irish played the Michigan Wolverines in the Shamrock Classic. While the nonconference game bears the clover emblem of Notre Dame, and hosted by the prestigious university, the Wolverines played in front of basically a home crowd and handed head coach Niele Ivey’s team not only a loss, but a 93-54 wake-up call.
In that defeat, three-time All-American guard Hannah Hidalgo had a season low 12 points on 19% shooting. It was the fourth game of the season following an offseason where All-American guard Olivia Miles left for the TCU Horned Frogs and a trio of teammates left for the WNBA. Even so, that defeat gave the idea that Notre Dame was in for possibly a rebuilding season.
The ACC schedule only increased that thought when the Irish went 7-6 in their first 13 games, including losses against two sides that did not even make the NCAA Tournament. With only a handful of matchups remaining, the question for the Irish was if there was a spot for them in the March Madness field at all.
On Monday, when the Buckeyes surged to an 11-0 run to start the game, it felt like it was the start of another Shamrock Classic — another matchup against a Big Ten team that would expose the Irish’s flaws. Instead, it was a microcosm of the 2025-26 Notre Dame season as a whole, which meant a comeback was on its way.
Notre Dame entered the Second Round with eight wins in its last nine. Outside of a two-point loss to the Duke Blue Devils in the ACC Tournament semifinal, the Irish came into the final postseason tournament of the year nearly unblemished. The return of guard KK Bransford from injury and a double-digit loss to the Virginia Cavaliers, away from home, were the catalysts for the season turnaround. Monday’s 83-73 turnaround victory over the Buckeyes was built on everything in the season that came before it.
“That is us staying together. I think our experience, a lot of us are seniors and grads, and we have that experience,” Bransford told reporters. “We’ve been through adversity throughout this whole entire season. So remembering that and knowing that it’s a game of runs, it’s a long game, that’s the first couple minutes. Then we had to just sustain it.”
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Within three minutes of Ohio State’s double-digit jump to start the game, Hidalgo had three steals. On the final of the three, Hidalgo ran on the fast break to hit the shot that put Notre Dame within a single possession. That takeaway came against Ohio State’s star point guard Jaloni Cambridge on what is a usually normal dribble up the court. Hidalgo showed that both herself and the 25-26 Notre Dame side is anything but normal.
Through Hidalgo’s chaos-inducing defense where she turns the mundane moments like dribbling over the center line, the Irish set the tone for the rest of the game. Notre Dame was going to outwork, frustrate and overcome a deficit to earn a fifth straight trip to the Sweet Sixteen.
There are certain statistics on the stat sheet that show a teams toughness over others. They are columns of impact that shows one side purely wanting it more than the other and Notre Dame swept them all.
Take rebounding for example. Hidalgo stands at 5-foot-6, which meant she was the shortest player on the court. The guard led all players with 13 rebounds and two of them came on offensive boards, going up against a group of taller Buckeyes, which included 6-foot-6 center Elsa Lemmilä. Notre Dame out-rebounded Ohio State 36-31, not bad for a team that finished the season with a negative .7 rebounding margin to their names.
“We have really fought through the adversity this season and really the last several weeks have become more tough,” head coach Niele Ivey told reporters. “That’s just with our defenses, with our rebounding. It’s our intensity that we’ve shown up with. But it has grown over time this season.”
Then there were the turnovers. Ohio State averaged 13.6 and forced 21.3 per game before the second round matchup. Notre Dame gives the ball up 13 times a game, but often time throughout this year, the Buckeyes’ relentless press forced more turnovers for opponents than they are used to allowing. With 1:46 left in the fourth quarter, and Notre Dame already up 13 points, the Buckeyes only forced 12 to that point.
Ohio State, a far younger team with three sophomores starting and only three upperclassmen total on its 11-player roster. The seven players who saw the court for coach Ivey on Monday were seniors, minus the junior Hidalgo. That experience came with the ball handling needed to keep the Scarlet and Gray from causing issues and getting on easy scoring breaks.
For Notre Dame, they forced 21 turnovers against the Buckeyes who looked like the much younger side. Ohio State tried to make quick and flashy passes, many turning into easy turnovers to give the Irish extra possessions. Then there was Hidalgo who had eight of the Irish’s 13 steals.
“It’s just reading what the offense is doing,” Hidalgo told reporters. “Thinking one step ahead, I think, is really big, just reading the passing lanes. I didn’t get too many on-ball steals. I don’t think I got any.”
Rebounds, offensive rebounds, turnovers forced and steals. All of those plays that come from how much hustle a player has against another all fell the way of the Irish. The plays that show how tough a team is willing to play to earn a victory, the types of statistics teams need to grind out victories.
“This group is really tough. We have worked to get to this point as well,” Ivey told reporters. “The toughness area for us was not strong early on. I talked about it a lot. Our consistency, we had some really tough losses. We had to learn a lot. This group, they had to learn each other, and I had to learn this group.”
A lopsided loss to Michigan. Playing with only six scholarship players at one point, due to injury. Going on the road and falling to opponents. All of those pieces formed a team that is now tough enough to make a run in the NCAA Tournament.
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