Was Notre Dame women's basketball pushed at all in en route to Sweet 16 of March Madness?

SOUTH BEND — Take one look at the left ankle of Notre Dame women’s basketball guard Olivia Miles and make sense of what she had just done as the Irish rolled into the NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 on Sunday with a sweet home win.

Make sense of her effort. Her grit. Her determination. Her heart. Her pain threshold. You can’t. You won’t. Just look at that left ankle propped on a ledge inside the Notre Dame women’s basketball locker room lounge after a manhandling of Michigan, 76-55, in a game that was close for about a minute. Maybe less.

“It felt better today,” Miles said of the Irish effort. “We were there more for each other today.”

How the #$^%@ did the 5-foot-10 Miles even get out of bed at her off-campus residence, much less run around Purcell Pavilion for 27:40? How did she score those eight points with four rebounds and five assists and one steal?

How?

How did she do anything athletically? It hurt to even look at that left ankle, all black and blue and a reddish rainbow of stomach-turning colors. It looked two sizes too large, too large to fit in her sneaker. That makes even less sense after Miles casually mentioned that it had decreased in size in the hours after she turned it Friday against Stephen F. Austin.

At least the golf-ball size swelling had subsided.

“This is crazy,” Miles said of having her shoes off and her dogs up and just chilling after another (relatively) easy day’s work.

Miles told Niele Ivey, her head coach, when she went down that it didn’t matter how big the ankle might balloon or how much throbbing pain she might have to endure, she was playing on Sunday. She was starting on Sunday.

“I made sure to play in my last home game here,” Miles said. “I refuse not to, if this it. It was a 50-50 shot if I was going to play. I woke up thinking I wasn’t going to play.”

Then reality kicked in. Kind of. Likely her last home game, and Miles would be relegated to a team warmup suit way down the bench? Not a chance.

“I was like (forget) it,” Miles said. “I want to get out there.”

She got out there. She started. No way she wasn’t. Not after all Miles had been through after suffering a serious right knee injury at the end of the 2022-23 season that cost her all of 2023-24. No way she wasn’t going to play in what likely (it is) her final home game in a Notre Dame uniform. The WNBA is calling, which means that she’ll wear the Irish uniform for at least another game this week in Alabama and maybe two.

Maybe it will be on to Tampa and the program’s 10^th Final Four. Maybe it will be on to the next chapter of her basketball life, which will likely include being a top five pick in the upcoming WNBA draft. Knowing all that, Miles was going to play on an ankle that would cause the average fan to take a month off from any competition.

“She was really good,” Ivey said Sunday.

Miles, who guessed she played at maybe 45% capacity, was back dribbling and shooting and distributing as only she can in less than 48 hours. She was back thanks to a ton of treatment, a lot of ice, a lot of hope and a lot of prayer, and honestly, after seeing that ankle up close early Sunday afternoon, a lot of something else.

Guts. Will. Determination. Miles owns it all. There are dudes on the Notre Dame football team bigger and stronger, but not a lot of them tougher. Not a chance. Not after Sunday.

In the toughness department, she’s one of one.

No wonder Miles had that thing wrapped tighter than a head coach in a close NCAA Tournament game. All the tape didn’t let it move much, but she moved fine. Miles moved well for most of the day and didn’t want to stop moving.

She was still in the game when Notre Dame was up 73-38, but there was no way she was coming out. The ankle could’ve been blacker. It could’ve been bluer. It could’ve been even more swollen than it already was, and she wasn’t leaving until she absolutely had to leave.

Why? Because let’s just say that this was her last game (it was), Miles wanted to spend every minute of it on the floor. Given what her career has been, she earned at least that much. She was going to come out only when she had to come out.

Afterward, Miles took the Notre Dame tag and smacked it, like, hauled off and really smacked it, into the Sweet 16 spot on the big board in the hallway outside the locker room. The force of her smack landed the Notre Dame name crookedly onto the big board, but she didn’t care.

“I haven’t played in this tournament for so long, so it felt good to put our name up on there,” Miles said. “We don’t want to stay in the Sweet 16. We want to make it out. Very blessed for where we’re at.”

Notre Dame is ticketed for Birmingham, Alabama and a Sweet 16 game on Friday. Miles vowed “not to even look at a basketball” on Monday. After that, don’t count anything out. Not after Sunday, when she should’ve been out.

Miles played, which wasn’t the most amazing part. She made it look easy.

It wasn’t.

Follow South Bend Tribune and NDInsider columnist Tom Noie on X (formerly Twitter): @tnoieNDI. Contact Noie at tnoie@sbtinfo.com

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Notre Dame women's basketball cruises into another Sweet 16 in March Madness

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