Notre Dame women’s basketball: Irish find a balance in scoring

In the music world, it’s Five for Fighting that creates sweet sounds. For Notre Dame women’s basketball, it’s Five for Scoring. Irish opponents have been facing the music this season. No. 3 Notre Dame (13-0) is the only women’s basketball team in the nation that features five players scoring in double figures. Freshman Skylar Diggins averages 13.1 points a game. Seniors Ashley Barlow (12.1) and Lindsay Schrader (11.5) are next, followed by juniors Becca Bruszewski (10.1) and Brittany Mallory (10.1). Could another Irish player reach double figures in scoring? Senior Melissa Lechlitner, hampered by a hamstring injury, averaged 5.5 points a game in Notre Dame’s first 11 contests. Against a pair of rugged opponents, Lechlitner was clutch, scoring 14 points against Vanderbilt and a career-high 20 points against Purdue. Lechlitner now averages 7.2 points a game heading into Saturday’s Big East opener against visiting Villanova on Saturday (2 p.m. EST). According to Notre Dame women’s basketball sports information director Chris Masters, the Irish are the only Division I school (out of 332) with five players in double figures. Oklahoma would have five, but Whitney Hand’s injury has taken her out of the Sooners’ lineup. Carlee Roethlisberger, whose brother Ben is the quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers, is close to double figures for Oklahoma at 9.8. A total of 29 teams have four players scoring in double figures, including Connecticut, Stanford, Nebraska and Vanderbilt. As a team, Notre Dame averages 82.6. A time to thrill Lechlitner, a 5-foot-9 guard, has a history of stepping it up in the storied Notre Dame-Purdue rivalry. Lechlitner scored 19 points against Purdue last season, and bettered that Monday. Notre Dame is 4-0 vs. the Boilermakers during Lechlitner’s tenure. The Irish winning streak has enabled Notre Dame to cut the Purdue lead in the series to 14-9. “This is a huge rivalry for us, Indiana schools,” Lechlitner said. “I think a lot of the players on our team got looked at by Purdue. For me, it came down to Purdue and Notre Dame. Obviously, there’s a lot of history and rivalry, so you’ve just got to bring it. It’s a fun game, it’s very intense.” Lechlitner hit 7-of-15 field-goal attempts against Purdue Monday, including 4-of-7 from 3-point range. “I got a lot of kickouts,” Lechlitner said. “We got mid-post and short corners, and my teammates just found me in the baseline corner a couple of times, and on the wing.” Finding the range Notre Dame missed its first seven shots from 3-point range against Purdue, but then hit eight of its next 14. “I think it was right after I told them to stop shooting, we went 8-for-14,” Notre Dame coach Muffet McGraw said. “We shot way too many 3s. We were just awful in the first half. We looked at their zone and said, ‘We’re going to get a lot of 3s. Is that what we want?’ The coaching staff was thinking, ‘No. We really want to do other things.’ The players apparently had a different idea.” Battling illness Bruszewski, at 6-2 the lone post player in Notre Dame’s starting lineup, missed Monday’s game because of illness. “Bru didn’t practice Sunday, and actually came to practice and had to go home and lay down,” McGraw said. “She was in the infirmary getting an IV all day after that. We got her on the bus anyway. We probably shouldn’t have brought her, but she thought maybe she’d feel a little better. She hasn’t eaten in a couple of days. She’ll probably be questionable for the next game.”