Hannah Hidalgo Is Ready to Break More Hearts This Season

She is on pace to set Notre Dame’s all-time scoring record. But the small and spunky point guard will always be most satisfied when she’s ruining your night on defense.

The game clock ticked below 20 seconds. More than 11,000 Louisville fans rose to their feet. It was the final day of the regular season, and the Cardinals, who were trailing Notre Dame 63–62 at home, had a chance to claim a piece of the ACC title with a win. And who better to do it than Tajianna Roberts, their all-conference floor general?

These are the moments players dream of as kids, the ones they practice alone in the driveway. 

There’s only one problem with all those reps: They don’t happen with Hannah Hidalgo guarding you. Hidalgo, all 5' 7" of her, is on her way to becoming college basketball’s steals queen. No ball is safe when it’s in her vicinity. 

Taylor Ballantyne/Sports Illustrated

With 17 seconds to go and 35 feet to the rim, Roberts took one dribble to her left, planted and spun back right, trying to get even the slightest step on Hidalgo for a drive to the basket. That left the ball exposed for a split second, and doing that with Hidalgo guarding you is a very, very bad idea. Hidalgo knifed through, poked the ball away with her right hand and chased it down to the other end of the floor as the crowd deflated. A few seconds later, Hidalgo scored a pair of free throws to seal Notre Dame’s 65–62 win.

“A moment like that where we’re at their gym and it’s packed and they need one bucket, just to be able to get that stop, it’s that feeling that you just took somebody’s heart away completely,” Hidalgo says. “It’s like a devious feeling, you know?” 

Hidalgo scored 31 points against South Carolina in her first college game three years ago and ever since has been rewriting Notre Dame’s record books. By the time the calendar flips to 2027, she’ll almost assuredly have passed Arike Ogunbowale as the program’s all-time leading scorer, needing just 167 points to do so. And yet if you ask the spunky New Jersey native if she’d rather score a winning bucket or snatch a game-winning steal, she says she’d rather get the stop.

“When I’m defending, I want to make it the worst day of your life,” Hidalgo says. 

Some players might say they love to defend. Hidalgo lives by it. It’s the first thing Irish head coach Niele Ivey noticed when she saw Hidalgo play AAU basketball. “I was like, Well, she’s ferocious,” Ivey says. Hidalgo, who became the shortest player to win the Naismith Defensive Player of the Year last season, says she realized as early as fourth grade that defense was her clearest path to playing time and decided to own that end of the floor. 

“She has the tenacity, the love and the will to want to be a defender and be a two-way player,” Ivey says. “The only other player I’ve been around with that level of intensity, competitiveness and drive defensively and offensively is [former Notre Dame star] Skylar [Diggins]. She’s the only other person.”

---

A rather mundane 7:30 a.m. practice almost two months before the start of the season has a palpable edge to it, because any workout involving Hidalgo does. One moment, she’s pleading with coaches over how a drill was scored (you’ll learn quickly that she doesn’t take kindly to losing). The next, she’s talking trash to the practice players she’s locking up defensively. When the rest of the team stops for a water break, she heads to the other end of the floor for extra work at the free throw line, never mind the fact that she’s a career 82% shooter there. After two straight misses, she hurls the ball in frustration, then grabs a new one and makes seven in a row before practice resumes. Once the team breaks its final huddle at the end of the session, it’s back to more shooting work, getting shots up until Hidalgo eventually has to lie down on the floor to catch her breath. 

“She pushes herself to the point of exhaustion,” Ivey says. “She always wants practice to be hard. She wants to be challenged all the time.” 

It’s impossible to spend time around Hidalgo and not want to work harder. This year’s Irish team is young, with five freshmen and a sophomore, forward Leah Macy, who missed the entire 2025–26 season with a knee injury; many of them are expected to play key roles. 

Niele Ivey (right) has said that Hidalgo is the best two-way guard she’s coached in her 20-year career. | Michael Miller/ISI Photos/Getty Images

“During high school, I was kind of a quiet player,” Macy says. “Playing and being on the same floor as Hannah, her energy is so contagious. It rubs off on everybody … I get super hyped because she’s always hype. She is very intense and very competitive and she doesn’t want to lose.”

It’s almost jarring to witness the fire Hidalgo attacks every practice and game with when you’ve spent time with her outside of basketball. The same person who talks about wanting to rip out opponents’ hearts has a smile off the court that rarely seems to wane. Teammates swear the joy you see when she’s dancing with friends on TikTok is the way she most often carries herself. Ivey calls Hidalgo’s on-court persona an alter ego of sorts. 

“A lot of people tell me I look scary and always mad, but off the court, I’m completely different, smiling all the time,” Hidalgo says. “I just want to have a good time. I see so many comments [on social media] like, ‘Man, there’s just no way that this girl is scoring 30 and having 16 steals in a game, there’s just no way this is the same girl.’ ”

“She’s really just a little teddy bear,” Macy says. “She’s just a ball of energy and a ball of joy.” 

Hidalgo is one of just three returning players on a young Notre Dame team this season. | Taylor Ballantyne/Sports Illustrated

Macy and a handful of other teammates joined Hidalgo and her best friend, Texas forward Madison Booker, on an August vacation to Hawaii. Unsurprisingly, a trip with Hidalgo is an active one: They hiked the Manoa Falls trail through a rainforest in Oahu, then decided that wasn’t enough and detoured on a longer route that ended up taking four extra hours and muddying a few pairs of white shoes. They spent nights at the beach, listening to music and the waves, soaking in the time together. The hope is that these off-court moments months before the Irish tip off the campaign in Rome against Villanova will help a team with just three returning players to a breakthrough season. And Hidalgo has been at the center of that, coming into her own as a leader and working tirelessly at that aspect of her game in addition to skill development. 

“I think she has done a great job,” Ivey says. “She knows when you build that chemistry, that trust and that comfort level, there is a direct translation on the court because she did that last year for the new team that we had.” 

---

The lessons from last year are plentiful. Hidalgo was surrounded by a largely new team after All-American Olivia Miles transferred to TCU and other key pieces like Sonia Citron graduated. Initially, she says she was “a little devastated” to see so many leave South Bend. “Nobody believed in us. Sometimes we probably didn’t believe in ourselves,” Hidalgo says. There were incredible highs early, like a November win over USC thanks to her game-winning pull-up jumper. But adversity hit after the new year: The Irish went just 3–6 in January, prompting questions about whether they’d even make the NCAA tournament. Hidalgo was carrying an enormous load, averaging 38.6 minutes per game that month. Her knees were so constantly scraped up from floor burns that the skin got infected. The Irish were bruised, both literally and figuratively, and their season looked headed toward an ugly finish. 

“She always held herself accountable, and she was very vocal about holding the team accountable,” Ivey says. “It’s amazing as a coach to have one of my captains and leaders be an extension of me in the locker room, an extension of me on the floor.” 

As the reigning National Defensive Player of the Year and the Irish’s leading scorer, Hidalgo can steal a game on both ends of the court. | Andy Lyons/Getty Images

Down the stretch, Hidalgo seemingly willed Notre Dame to wins. In that Louisville game to close the regular season (the Irish finished at 20–9), she had 30 points, 10 rebounds, seven assists and five steals. Two games earlier, she had 11 steals in a blowout win over SMU. Come NCAA tournament time, Hidalgo exploded even more, headlined by a 31-point triple-double against Vanderbilt in a cathartic Sweet 16 win that sent the Irish deeper into the Big Dance than they had gone in her first two seasons. 

And yet the practice gym that Hidalgo jokes she lives in presents constant reminders that there’s still more for her to accomplish. The walls are a shrine to the program’s decorated past—displayed are pieces of the court from every Final Four appearance and multiple banners, plus a mural of some of the program’s most famous alums, with a prominent 9 final fours at the top.  

“When you come to Notre Dame, you assume the legacy of the people that came before you and the weight of that,” Ivey says. 

Within Hidalgo is an unwavering belief that this team is capable of the kind of season that will stand out in Notre Dame lore. The roster may be young, but talent isn’t a question with a top-five recruiting class and Macy, a former top-20 recruit, joining the rotation. Since this group arrived on campus, Hidalgo has noticed a big difference from previous seasons on the defensive end. Fitting, considering who their leader is. 

Hidalgo shifted into a higher gear during last season’s NCAA tournament, where the Irish ultimately lost to Sarah Strong (right) and UConn. | Andy Hancock/NCAA Photos/Getty Images

“We have all these girls that have something to prove, and they’re doing whatever it takes,” Hidalgo says. “It’s always been hard to get people to lock into the concepts and it usually takes them a little longer to figure it out, but they’re so smart. When we had our first team practice, they were reading passing lanes and getting steals and there for [every] rotation. I’m like, Yo, this is different.” 

And the Irish’s defense in their Final Four pursuit will have the ultimate heartbreaker at the point of attack, ready to ruin star players’ nights and end opponents’ seasons one steal at a time. 

“She’s just always there,” Macy says. “You’ll turn around and be like, Oh my gosh, Hannah has the ball. How is she everywhere? She’s a little pest. People don’t want to go up against her.”          

---