Notre Dame women’s basketball: Irish looking to follow 1997, 2001 teams

SOUTH BEND -- Coach Muffet McGraw’s Notre Dame Fighting Irish walked off the Joyce Center court after Sunday’s first-round NCAA Tournament action with their 28th victory of the season, joining the 2001 and the 1997 Notre Dame women’s basketball teams as the only Irish squads to reach that height. Now, the Irish (28-5) want to continue their journey to join those two storied teams in an even more elite category. McGraw’s 2001 and 1997 teams are the only Notre Dame women’s basketball clubs to reach the Final Four, with the 2001 team setting the gold standard for the Irish by capturing the national title. McGraw’s current squad hopes to continue to carve out its own special place in Irish history, and the next phase for No. 2 seed Notre Dame is a second-round battle against a Vermont team hoping to make a little of its own history. No. 10 seed Vermont (27-6) won the first NCAA Tournament game in the program’s history on Sunday by upsetting No. 7 Wisconsin, 64-55. Now, the Catamounts hope to reach the Sweet Sixteen for the first time and beat a top 20 team for the first time in program history Tuesday night when Vermont takes on Notre Dame at 7:16 p.m. EDT (ESPN2). At stake is a trip to the Sprint Center in Kansas City for Sweet Sixteen action. Tuesday’s winner at Notre Dame will play on Sunday in Kansas City against the winner of the game between No. 3 seed Oklahoma (24-10) and No. 11 seed Arkansas-Little Rock (27-6). Game times will be announced later by the NCAA. Notre Dame, which hadn’t played for 13 days since being eliminated by No. 1 Connecticut in the Big East Tournament semifinals, sprinted past Cleveland State in the second half and rolled to an 86-58 victory. Against Vermont, the Irish will face a team will a pair of tall, sharp-shooting guards. Courtnay Pilypaitis, a 6-foot-1 guard, is averaging 14.8 points and 8.0 rebounds a game. May Kotsopoulos, a 5-10 guard, leads Vermont in scoring with an average of 17.3 points a game. “You just have to focus on your defensive concepts that you’ve been working on all season,” Irish point guard Melissa Lechlitner said. “If they try to post you up, you just have to make sure you’re in front and rely on your help side. We’ll stay with our basic concepts.” Freshman Skylar Diggins leads Notre Dame’s balanced attack with a scoring average of 13.4 points a game. Ashley Barlow contributes 11.1 points a game, and Lindsay Schrader averages 10.9 points a game and 6.7 rebounds a game. But Notre Dame is deep and balanced. “I think it’s going to be a challenge for us to match up to them,” McGraw said of the battle against Vermont. “They play an interesting style that we haven’t seen too much of with their big guards. We really have our work cut out for us.” For McGraw, Notre Dame’s success will be tied in to defense and rebounding. “I think getting to the NCAA Tournament, it ultimately comes down to defense and rebounding, and I think probably every coach in the tournament is telling their team it is the most important thing you can do,” McGraw said. McGraw said that working for offensive boards is a challenge in ND’s “Princeton offense,” because with most of the players on the perimeter, they have to really hustle to hit the glass. “That is something we have been getting the guards to do more, which has really helped us,” McGraw said. Notre Dame’s bench led the way for the Irish in Sunday’s 86-58 victory against No. 15 Cleveland State in first-round action. The Irish bench outscored the starters, 44-42, and outshot the starters, 68 percent to 41 percent. Vermont has one player off its bench who averages five points or better a game, Tonya Young (8.0). Notre Dame boasts four players off its bench who average five points or better a game - Becca Bruszewski (9.5), Devereaux Peters (7.1), Brittany Mallory (6.9) and Natalie Novosel (5.0). Vermont’s big guns, Pilypaitis and Kotsopoulos, averaged 36.2 and 34.8 minutes a game respectively. Notre Dame’s top player in terms of minutes is senior guard Melissa Lechlitner, who averages 29.2 minutes a game. “They’re a very deep team, but we’re a deep team as well,” Vermont coach Sharon Dawley said. “I’m looking at it as, they’re very deep, and it’s only 40 minutes. How deep we go will depend on how the game goes. We’re well conditioned athletes. We’ll rest them as need be, but if May (Kotsopoulos) and Courtney (Pilypaitis) have to go the distance, they’ll manage it. Adrenaline is a wonderful thing. At this point, sometimes, adrenaline will overcome fatigue.” Both teams like the transition game, and Vermont has faced a press by two of the top teams in the country _ UConn and Nebraska. The Catamounts lost to Connecticut, 84-42, and lost to Nebraska, 90-54. “We’re used to it,” Kotsopoulos said.. “We focus on transition offense ourselves, so we’re used to practicing against it every single day in practice.”