The Notre Dame women’s basketball team is dealing with several injuries as it heads to Los Angeles to play USC women’s basketball on Saturday in the Galen Center. Fighting Irish Wire staff writer Geoffrey Clark identified this as the Fighting Irish’s foremost limitation going into the game against USC:
“As deep as the Irish are, injuries perhaps have held them back from further success,” Clark told us. “They have numerous key players sidelined right now, which has stretched Niele Ivey’s rotation to its limit. Without reinforcements, it feels like only a matter of time before their available depth gets exposed because expecting their top healthy players to log a bunch of minutes every game becomes unrealistic after a while.”
On3 Sports reports that Notre Dame forward Liatu King is on track to play against USC. Several other prominent Notre Dame players won’t, as reporter Tyler Horka outlines here:
With Karlen sidelined in addition to graduate senior front-court mates Maddy Westbeld and Kylee Watson, the former recovering from offseason foot surgery and the latter rehabbing from knee surgery in the spring, and junior guard KK Bransford, who’s out for the year nursing a foot injury, Notre Dame has eight available players against the third-ranked team in the country this weekend.
King’s return should push Cassandre Prosper back to the bench, where she’ll be an option along with sophomore guard Emma Risch and senior guard Sarah Cernugel, a former walk-on. Prosper and Risch are coming off some stellar performances; Prosper is averaging 10.8 points and 5.5 rebounds per game while Risch, Notre Dame’s sharpshooter, has made six of her last nine three-point shots.
USC has the deeper bench and will therefore know that it has the better chance of wearing down the Fighting Irish in the final quarter.
Notre Dame might need a freshman to step up and play especially well if the Irish are to pull off the upset on the road. Here’s Clark on that freshman player:
Freshman Kate Koval quickly is establishing herself as the latest Irish star. She can do literally everything required of a post player, which is score, rebound and block. We’ll see how well she adjusts to better competition as her first collegiate season progresses as well as how other teams plan for her, but don’t be surprised if she has at least one triple-double, especially against an inferior opponent.
USC isn’t an inferior opponent, but the point remains that Koval might give Notre Dame a little more upside in this game than some experts think. Still, the lack of available players means Notre Dame could go with just a six- or seven-player rotation. The margins are smaller for the Irish than for USC.
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