There's no question Niele Ivey and her Notre Dame players will be wondering what could have been this season. Stacked with the most talent she'd had in her five years coaching the Irish, Ivey was well-positioned to lead the Irish to a national title.
Instead, Ivey and the Irish have exited the NCAA Tournament in the Sweet 16 for four consecutive seasons. Their latest one came in a 71-62 loss to TCU.
Afterwards, Ivey took to the postgame podium alongside three players, at least two of which have played their final games for the Irish. The other has to decide whether or not to jump to the WNBA now or wait another year.
Olivia Miles scored 10 points and led the Irish with three assists. Sonia Citron had nine points, and Maddy Westbeld added seven, though both players also finished with four fouls.
Here's what all four had to say after the game:
Ivey's opening statement
"Well, tough loss today. I want to start off thanking my seniors. Exactly what I said after the game in the locker room, these three believed in my vision and they are so loyal, amazing young women that have a lot of great basketball ahead of them. I am just really grateful for what they have done for me and for our program. It's a resurgence of the program taking over, and they've left it better than what they came in with. I'm really grateful, such an incredible group of young women.
I'm really proud to be their coach. They know that I've got 'em for life. This is just an amazing group of young women that are so talented, so gifted. But more importantly, they are better humans than they are basketball players. I'm just really grateful I had this opportunity to be part of their journey. They're very special to me. They mean so much.
Again, came up short today. I thought with the game, obviously a high game. A game of runs, we had a great stretch in that third quarter defensively that we went up, but unfortunately, tables turn, couldn't make shots that we normally make. Couldn't get the stops and just didn't finish the game the way we wanted to.
For this group and for these three, like I said, just really, really grateful and looking forward to eventually trying to build this back up. Or not even build it back up, but, again, with Notre Dame women's basketball, they put it in a great place, and I'm really grateful for that."
Westbeld on guarding Sedona Price
"I think definitely the plan was to be as physical as possible with her. She is a great post player. She is the center of the offense. So being as physical as I could, really tried to push her off the block and make her try to work for everything.
So I think fouls here and there, but I think we tried to do just that."
Miles on why the defense was so difficult
"I can comment on that. No offense to them, but it was really nothing they did to alter us. Obviously, Sedona is in there. She was blocking shots. That's one factor. But we literally were just missing shots that we normally make, and that's going to happen at times.
In those moments, we have to rely on our defense, and we tried to do that. I ...
