Notre Dame Women's Basketball Throttles Pittsburgh For Fourth Straight Win

There was no doubt who the better team was on Sunday afternoon when the Notre Dame women’s basketball team played at Pittsburgh. The Fighting Irish (22-4, 13-3 ACC) were all gas and no brakes in an 83-43 full-throttle win over the Panthers (10-17, 3-13).

The final result was a far cry from the narrow 69-63 Irish decision over the same team just 10 days ago on Notre Dame’s home floor.

The Fighting Irish gave no quarter in this game, leading 24-8 at the end of a first quarter that they closed on an 8-0 run after spurting with 7-0 run earlier in the game’s first 10 minutes. The only thing that kept the Irish from a bigger lead was fouls.

Freshman Cassandre Prosper picked up a pair of Notre Dame’s five first quarter personal fouls. Pittsburgh matched that total themselves and a suffocating Notre Dame defense held the hosts to 3 for 13 shooting from the field in the first quarter and 6 for 27 (22%) in the first half.

After going up 27-8, the Irish momentarily sputtered and missed their next six shots, but proceeded to rain 3-pointers inside the Peterson Events Center.

Sonia Citron nailed treys on back to back possessions to give her 11 of her team-high tying 13 points at halftime. Maddy Westbeld followed with another 3 and had 10 of her own 13 points by halftime. Her only points of the second half came on her second triple of the day.

The three combined treys by Citron and Westbeld helped Notre Dame close the half by outscoring Pitt 11-2 going into the locker room for a 40-16 lead.

Lauren Ebo saw 16-plus minutes of action in just her second game since Jan. 26. The forward scored two points in five minutes in last Thursday’s return to action from a lower leg injury, but she finished with 10 points and six rebounds against the Panthers.

Ebo’s play, along with Nat Marshall and Jenna Brown (both with nine points) helped the Fighting Irish bench outscore Pitt’s 33-21 off the bench. The Panthers were coming off back-to-back games in which they scored at least 51 bench points and averaged 38 bench points over their last four games.

Olivia Miles scored 10 points and pulled down a game-best 11 rebounds for her 10th double-double of the season. She helped the Irish to 10-0 and 14-0 runs in the second half.

Notre Dame came up just short of holding an opponent to under 40 points for the first time in more than five years, but Pittsburgh hit a barrage of late 3-pointers after a miserable start from long range. Pitt started the game by missing its first nine shots from beyond the arc but connected on 4 of 7 in the fourth quarter alone.

The win keeps the Fighting Irish in contention to win the regular season ACC championship and the No. 1 seed in next week’s conference tournament. They are tied with Duke atop the conference standings with a 13-3 record with two games to play.

The Irish lost to the Blue Devils two weeks ago and need to win their final two games against Georgia Tech and Louisville and have the Blue Devils lose to either NC State or North Carolina to get the top seed.

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