Niele Ivey was hired by Notre Dame a month into a pandemic, so nothing about her first week as the head women’s basketball coach was very normal.
Her introductory press conference was on Zoom; she sat six feet away from then-Irish athletic director Jack Swarbrick. It was awkwardly quiet, with no extended family and close friends clapping and cheering from the back of the room. But it was a momentous day regardless: For the first time in 34 years, someone not named Muffet McGraw would be running the show at Notre Dame; and for the first time in any sport in school history, the Irish would be led by a Black woman head coach.
A few hours after Ivey’s introductory press conference, she logged onto her computer at home. Her best friends had planned a celebratory Zoom — congrats, you got the job!, that sort of thing — and it was serving as a nice little substitute for an in-person party.
Then, Ivey’s phone started to ring. It was Olivia Miles, the No. 2 prospect in the Class of 2021, according to ESPN HoopGurlz. And she delivered the kind of news that took an already incredible day to one Ivey would never, ever forget: Miles committed to play for Ivey.
When Ivey returned to the Zoom party, she shared the news — and her friends went crazy, as she expected they would.
“It was so fun to share that with my best friends, the people closest to me,” Ivey recalls. “I knew the magnitude of it, how incredible it was.”
One day later, Sonia Citron called with the same good news. The two-time New York Gatorade Player of the Year and the nation’s 16th-ranked recruit would join Ivey in South Bend, too.
“The fact that it happened that fast, and I knew the caliber players I was getting in Olivia and Sonia — I mean, my heart exploded,” Ivey says. “I was emotional.”
That three-day stretch in late April 2020 laid the foundation for the program that Ivey wanted to build. It was the first of many steps that led the Irish to their current perch near the top of the sport — a true national championship contender and one of the last 16 teams standing in this year’s NCAA Tournament. No. 3 seed Notre Dame will face No. 2 seed TCU in Birmingham on Saturday night with a spot in the Elite Eight on the line.
Ivey’s Irish boast arguably the nation’s top backcourt. If it’s not the best, it’s certainly the most entertaining to watch, with endless energy on both ends of the floor from sophomore sensation Hannah Hidalgo paired with Miles’ incredible passing ability — a pair of pocket-sized point guards, as the Notre Dame marketing campaign says. Add in Citron’s lethal long-range shooting, and it’s a group that can beat its opponents in myriad ways. Which it did, for most of the year.
The Irish lost three of their last five games heading into Selection Sunday, which is why they ended up on the 3-seed line. But their break between the ACC Tournament and their first-round NCAA Tournament games did this team good, as the Irish crushed No. 14 Stephen F. Austin and No. 6 Michigan over the first weekend by an average of 36.5 points. This is the team that reached the No. 1 spot in the AP poll earlier this season. This is the version of Notre Dame that has as good a chance as anyone in the field to cut down the nets in Tampa.
And it’s hard to explain how and why the Irish got to this point without starting with Miles and Citron, two foundational pieces of this program, two players who bought into a first-time head coach’s vision at the school she knew and loved more than any other. They remember comparing notes after Ivey got the job and called them that very first week; they both had been recruited by her when she was an Irish assistant before her one-season stint in the NBA as an assistant coach for the Memphis Grizzlies.
“Coach Ivey just captivated us,” Citron says. “It was a little bit of everything, but it was more so her belief in what me and Liv could do for this program. I had a belief in her and her vision, but she had that same belief in me.”
Citron was sold on Ivey as a person and loved what she learned about how she wanted to play. Ivey wanted to play really fast, and she also wanted her players to shoot lots of threes. Music to Citron’s ears (and much to future opponents’ dismay.) Miles remembers being told she’d get to run a high-octane offense with a lot of ball screens, all things any point guard would want to hear. But that’s how it’s been, and that’s because of she much she trusts her guards. They play fast and play free.
That style and many of Notre Dame’s current players have taken the Irish to the Sweet 16 in years past. This will actually be their fourth consecutive Sweet 16; they’ve never gone farther. Last season’s promising run was derailed by a short bench and an officiating crew that forced Hidalgo to miss meaningful minutes to take out her nose ring mid-game. That short bench accounted for a number of injuries, but none more impactful than this: Miles missed the entire 2023-24 season after tearing her ACL.
Ivey, who had two torn ACLs in her career, tried to be “the ultimate support system” for Miles, so that she knew she was loved as she healed. But it was hard, Miles admits. She would question what kind of movement was OK, how and when she could trust her knee again, how and when she could trust her instincts, too.
Now, she’s paired with Hidalgo and defenses have to pick their poison. Teams can’t put their single best defender on all three of Miles, Hidalgo and Citron. Someone’s going to be able to get open. And opponents have been burned by all three. Citron’s known for her daggers, but she’s also capable of single-handedly taking over a game (like she did late vs. NC State back in February). Ivey calls Citron her silent assassin. Miles says she can be more of a catch-and-shoot scorer this season, too.
Notre Dame will need its seniors — and its sophomore star and its reliable frontcourt players — this weekend as the Irish try to reach the Final Four for the first time since 2019 and the first time under Ivey.
But they’re ready to meet the moment. It’s what Miles and Citron signed up for, and it’s what they wanted to do when choosing to play together. They haven’t been shy in stating their goals of reaching the Final Four and winning the national championship. The real test starts now, but Ivey thinks this roster has a perfect blend of veteran leadership and talent to ace it.
“The trust is there because the experience is there,” Ivey says. “I have a sense of calmness with this group. We get everybody’s best game, but also, we have a lot of experience. We have been in the fire enough where we know how to respond to the different challenges each game brings — which is great, because instead of feeling like, ‘OK, I have young players who have never been in these moments or never had the experience,’ we can lean on the experiences that we’ve had. We have players that have been in those moments.
“We have a really special team.”
