Notre Dame Women’s Basketball: Freshmen shine in down season

It’s hard to find positives in the kid of season Notre Dame Women’s Basketball is having, but a couple of freshmen are giving us hope for the future.

The Notre Dame Women’s Basketball team was always going to experience a drop-off after the best WNBA draft class in the programs history walked out the door. Arike Ogunbowale, Marina Mabrey, Jessica Shepard, Brianna Turner and Jackie Young were absolutely the exception, and should never be considered the standard. What they did at Notre Dame was remarkable, but unfortunately, you can’t control the height of the bar they set in the minds of fans.

As a result, this season has been extra-disappointing to those who follow Notre Dame Women’s Basketball.

There have, however, been a couple of bright spots and signs of hope for the future this season. These have come in the form of Samantha Brunelle and Anaya Peoples.

The two highly-touted freshmen have not disappointed, despite Notre Dame’s struggles during the 2019-2020 season.

Brunelle is currently second on the team in scoring with 14 points per game and third in rebounds, hauling down six per outing.

Peoples is fourth on the team in scoring with 13.1 points per game and first in rebounds with 8.1 per game.

Both of those are outstanding stat lines for Div. 1 freshmen, regardless of a team’s record.

Moving forward, with leading scorer and sophomore Katlyn Gilbert returning for at least another season and the pending situation regarding the health of Abby Prohaska, there’s a very good chance that the Irish are right back at the top of the ACC standings next season. They’ll have a battle-tested team that will have seen the lowest of lows, and have plenty of room for growth and improvement.

Muffet McGraw is going to figure this out. She is too talented as a coach — and has too much young talent on her roster — to fail.