FORT WORTH, Texas — Hannah Hidalgo’s voice was a calming presence in Notre Dame’s huddles.
With less than a minute to play, she gathered her teammates and reiterated the same two words: “One stop.” With Notre Dame holding a one-point lead over Louisville in a March ACC meeting, she went down the line speaking to each teammate, “I need you to get me one stop.”
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But as Hidalgo has done all season, she got the stop herself.
As Louisville guard Taj Roberts dribbled at the top of the key, hoping to get into the offense and take the game-winning shot, Hidalgo began sizing up the sophomore guard. Everything began moving in slow motion for the Notre Dame All-American, her eyes locked onto the ball and each dribble triggered a thought from her. She picked up the cadence of Roberts’ handle and knew that once Roberts turned around, she was going to go for the steal.
It took 11 dribbles and two trips to the left and right side of the arc before Roberts turned. Hidalgo didn’t hesitate. She swiped at the ball with her right hand, and before Roberts could react, Hidalgo was running down the court with the ball. She was eventually fouled and iced the game with two free throws.
“I told her right after that, I said, ‘You’re player of the year,’” Irish teammate KK Bransford said. “Like, no matter what anybody says, I know she’s player of the year, because of plays like that.”
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Hidalgo scored seven of Notre Dame’s final nine points and tallied 30 points, 10 rebounds and five steals in the victory.
It’s impossible to summarize the season that the ACC Player of the Year has had in one play, but much like she did against Louisville, Hidalgo has done everything for this year’s Irish.
When Notre Dame returned just three players from last year’s Sweet 16 team, Hidalgo knew she’d have to take a step up as a leader, but she also sets the tone on both sides of the ball. She’s the nation’s third-leading scorer with 25.2 points per game. She leads the country in steals with 189. Her 5.5 per game average is the second time she’s averaged over four steals per game. Only two other Power 4 conference players have done that even once in their careers since 2009.
She’s carried the Irish to the Sweet 16 and done it by being one of the best two-way guards in the history of women’s college basketball. Her next test is going head-to-head against the nation’s top scorer, Vanderbilt’s Mikayla Blakes, with a trip to the Elite Eight on the line Friday afternoon.
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“She has had a lot of weight, a lot of pressure, she’s helped take this group, and I had a completely new team, and got us to where we are right now,” Notre Dame coach Niele Ivey said. “And that speaks a lot to her game. She’s the best two-way player and one of the best guards I’ve ever coached.”
Ivey, who began as an assistant coach at Notre Dame in 2007, has coached Irish standout guards Skylar Diggins, Jewell Loyd and Arike Ogunbowale.
Charel Allen was an All-American in her own right during her playing time at Notre Dame. She was the first player in program history to surpass 1,000 points, 500 rebounds, 200 assists and 200 steals in her career. Now, as a Notre Dame assistant, her focus is on the guards, which means she spends a lot of time with Hidalgo.
They’ve played one-on-one often, and Hidalgo’s advice to Allen was always the same: “Don’t dribble.”
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“So guess what? I don’t (dribble) around her anymore,” Allen said with a chuckle. “I try to use my size and shoot over her. I think, until you’re out there and actually going up against her, you don’t realize how quick her hands and feet are.”
Hidalgo is just 5 feet 6 inches, but she’s faster and more agile than most players on the court. She shows that on offense, especially as she attacks the basket with the ball in her hands, but it’s also obvious on defense.
A quick turn of her hips can be the difference between an opponent’s offense running its set to plan or Hidalgo going the other way with the ball.
Arguably, nobody understands that more in Notre Dame’s program than Vanessa De Jesus. The sixth-year guard played her first five years at Duke and faced Hidalgo often in conference games.
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“It’s definitely better to be on her team,” De Jesus said.
Hidalgo puts opposing offenses in conflict with the multitude of ways she can steal the ball. She can pick a ballhandler’s pockets, as she did against Louisville, or she can jump passing lanes or even steal inbounds passes. After a missed layup, she can steal the ball from the rebounder within seconds, as she did in the first quarter of Notre Dame’s first-round NCAA Tournament win against Fairfield.
“On the defensive end, it’s a whole other thing that she brings,” De Jesus said. “Just that fieriness, the relentlessness that she brings.”
Her intensity from the beginning of the game to the end makes her hard for opponents to scout.
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“She plays really hard,” Vanderbilt coach Shea Ralph said. “You have a player that plays really hard, good things usually happen, and you can tell she’s been playing a lot.”
Hidalgo ranks 10th nationally in usage rate among players who have played at least 20 games. She’s third among all Power 4 conference players in usage rate, and only three Power 4 conference players have played more minutes per game.
For Notre Dame to be successful, that usage rate is about more than just one side of the ball. Notre Dame wouldn’t have 24 wins if Hidalgo were just an offensive-minded player.
“People don’t understand what it takes to be that active defensively, playing 36, 37 minutes a night,” ACC Network analyst Kelly Gramlich said. “There’s a reason why these numbers haven’t been done before, and it’s because most players of her ability, who — by the way, she’s scoring 25 a game — they exert so much effort on the offensive end that they either they don’t have enough left to put that much on the defensive end, or they just have not been as defensive-minded as her.”
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Defense has always been part of Hidalgo’s game, though.
Growing up in New Jersey, she was always the smallest player on the court as a kid, so to stay on the court, she had to lean on her defense.
In many ways, Hidalgo is a natural at reading ballhandlers because her experience as a point guard helps. But she also spends plenty of time studying ballhandlers and understanding their tendencies.
“I try (to) think a couple steps ahead of the ballhandler,” Hidalgo said.
Her big shots and acrobatic finishes may grab the headlines, but defense has always come first for Hidalgo.
“I had to prioritize something else and bring something else to the floor so that I can get playing time,” Hidalgo said. “It was just poking at the ball, and just making the ballhandler uncomfortable, especially (because) it’s hard bringing up the ball with somebody pressing you like that.”
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With just under five minutes left in the sixth-seeded Irish’s second-round upset over No. 3 seed Ohio State, Hidalgo picked up her fourth foul.
She eventually fouled out with 40 seconds left, but not before risking her in-game eligibility to get two more steals to reach eight total and set a new single-game NCAA Tournament program record, passing Diggins and Ivey’s total of seven from when she was a Notre Dame guard.
Getting the green light to even attempt that steal is trust that has been built over the years among Hidalgo, her teammates and Ivey.
“That’s her superpower, the way that she defends,” Ivey said. “There’s sometimes that she takes chances, and we have to re-take off of the chance that she takes, but the majority of the time she makes great decisions and great plays.”
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Hidalgo’s focus on defense trickles over to her teammates as well. When at its best, Notre Dame causes chaos and forces turnovers in whatever defense it’s using.
That’s because Hidalgo’s competitiveness is contagious.
“She just makes everyone want to compete 10 times harder,” Irish guard Iyana Moore said.
It’s steals like the one against Louisville that she enjoys more than making a pivotal late-game shot.
“The feeling of getting a defensive stop is just so much more pride and joy because, you know, again, that’s what I pride myself in,” she said.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Notre Dame Fighting Irish, Women’s College Basketball
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