With injuries stripping Notre Dame of its depth, it seemed like only a matter of time before that caught up. It didn’t happen during the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament, but Albany Regional 1 posed tougher competition and thus increased the likelihood of the issue being exposed. Oregon State was the team to do it, beating the Irish in the Sweet 16, 70-65.
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A game that featured eight ties and 11 lead changes was destined to come down to the end. The Irish (27-7) were in front, 59-57, with less than three minutes to play when Donovyn Hunter hit a 3 to give the Beavers (28-7) the lead for good. One possession later, Lily Hansford made another 3 off an offensive rebound, putting the Beavers up four.
The teams continued to trade free throws and layups until the Irish called a timeout down, 67-63, with 26.1 seconds left. Their final hopes were snuffed when Talia von Oelhoffen blocked a [autotag]Sonia Citron[/autotag] 3 and promptly made two free throws after being fouled. At that point, the deficit was too big with too little time left for the Irish.
The Irish scored 26 points off 27 Beavers turnovers, but that was canceled out by losing the rebounding battle, 42-24. The Beavers also exploited the Irish’s lack of available size by winning the battle for points in the paint, 40-28. Also, three Beavers scored 14 points off the bench while [autotag]KK Bransford[/autotag], the Irish’s lone reserve in this game, was kept out of the scoring column.
As expected, Raegan Beers was a problem as she scored 18 points and grabbed 13 rebounds for the Beavers. Also a problem was Timea Gardiner, who also achieved a double-double with 21 points and 11 boards. Hunter scored 11 points, and van Oelhoffen dished out a game-high nine assists in addition to her clutch block of Citron.
Citron led all scorers with 22 points and also had the most rebounds for the Irish with seven. [autotag]Maddy Westbeld[/autotag] scored 19 points but picked up three of her four fouls in the first half, possibly affecting what the Irish could do on defense in the middle. [autotag]Anna DeWolfe[/autotag] had 12 points in her final college game.
[autotag]Hannah Hidalgo[/autotag] tied her season low with 10 points on 4-of-17 shooting. She might have become disconcerted when she was ordered to have her nose ring removed before the start of the second quarter and missed the first four minutes of that quarter while having the issue taken care of.
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