COLUMBUS, Ohio — Hannah Hidalgo had a dominant performance to show that she is still one of the best players in women’s basketball.
The Notre Dame junior had 23 points, nine rebounds, eight steals and six assists, and the sixth-seeded Fighting Irish led the entire game en route to a 79-60 victory over 11th-seeded Fairfield on Saturday in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
Hidalgo was an AP first-team All-America selection her first two years but was a second-team pick this season despite winning ACC Player of the Year for the second straight season.
When asked if she viewed the game as a statement or letting out frustration for not making the first team, Hidalgo said it wasn’t at all.
“I’m going to still go out and play the same way I’ve been playing. I’ve been playing consistently this whole season and since my freshman year,” she said. “Right now it’s about winning, so I don’t care about any of the accolades. I didn’t care about ’em going into this year and I’m here to win.”
Hidalgo’s bigger aim is trying to get the Fighting Irish into the Sweet 16. They will face No. 3 seed Ohio State on Monday after the Buckeyes advanced with a 75-54 win over Howard.
Notre Dame has reached the tournament’s second weekend in each of its last 14 trips.
Hidalgo, the Division I leader in steals, had five in the first half, along with 13 points, seven rebounds and five assists as the Fighting Irish led 36-24 at the break. All told, Hidalgo factored on all but 10 points in the first two quarters.
The eight steals is the most by a Notre Dame player in an NCAA Tournament game, surpassing the previous mark of seven by Skylar Diggins and Hidalgo’s coach, Niele Ivey.
“Her success and her stats speaks for itself,” Ivey said. “She’s one of the best players in the country. We’re trying to win, and she mentioned that, like that’s second to anything else. When you have somebody with that maturity that can do what she does, it’s phenomenal.”
Iyana Moore scored 18 points and Cassandre Prosper had 17 points and eight rebounds as the Fighting Irish won for the 10th time in 12 games.
Notre Dame put the game out of reach with an 11-2 run to start the third. The Fighting Irish’s largest lead was 54-31 late in the quarter.
“Our attempt was to try to throw it up to somebody else so that we weren’t bringing the ball up in an open floor against her, but certainly she picked her moments and made us pay for it,” Fairfield coach Carly Thibault-DuDonis said of Hidalgo. “So when we were getting maybe a little bit of a defensive stop with some momentum to try to score in transition, she did a great job of halting that, and we weren’t able to score with numbers. There’s not a lot of people out there like her. She’s very one-of-a-kind.”
Long-distance woes
The Stags led the nation in 3-pointers, making 11.4 per game, but were 9 of 29 on Saturday, including 2 of 11 in the first half.
Meghan Anderson led Fairfield with 21 points and Jillian Huerter scored 12. Kaety L’Amoreaux — the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Player of the Year — had seven points.
“I don’t even think we attempted enough 3s. We’re at our best when we get a couple of ball reversals and a paint touch,” Thibault-DuDonis said. “They did a really nice job of digging in early in a possession, and we didn’t get to a second action enough to get to that point in an offensive possession. So in a microcosm, going forward, we need to be a little bit more physically tougher, mentally focused, to be who we are when someone tries to take away what we’re good at.”
