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Notre Dame Fighting Irish gets bit by injury bug again with guard out for season

Injury-plagued Notre Dame Fighting Irish loses KK Bransford for season; Maddy Westbeld also out, roster down to 10 players.

By Oliver Vandervoort

Matt Cashore-Imagn Images
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As the Notre Dame Fighting Irish women’s basketball team prepares for the upcoming season, it will now be short two important players. One, Maddy Westbeld is missing the start of the season, but there isn’t any guarantee on just when she might return. The other injury, announced earlier this week, is far more serious.

KK Bransford announced she’ll miss the rest of the season. She needs to take the year off in order to rehab a lower leg injury. The announcement came on Monday and is an especially sad new step in Bransford’s story since she was on the verge of leaving the Irish this year and decided to return.

Bransford briefly entered the NCAA transfer portal this offseason with the intent to find a new place to continue her college career. She ended up deciding the Notre Dame Fighting Irish was actually still the place to do so, though, a decision that was made only a couple of weeks after her portal entrance.

While Bransford has primarily been a role player at Notre Dame, her presence will be missed. She’s appeared in 66 games with 19 starts, averaging 7.5 points and 3.4 rebounds in 24.9 minutes of action per game. It’s her effort and willingness to do the little things on defense the Irish will miss the most without her in the lineup.

Notre Dame Fighting Irish women’s basketball loses another player

Teamed with Westbeld already sitting out at least some of the season, that means that the roster is already down to 10 healthy players from an original 12.

This team especially has been rather snake bit. Last year, they started the season with star guard Olivia Miles sitting out. She eventually missed the entire season. She was hardly the only one who missed time in the 2023-24 season. Cassandre Prosper only played in five games before a season-ending injury. Emma Risch played in seven before she needed season-ending hip surgery. 

Now the Notre Dame Fighting Irish women’s basketball team will need to find a way to deal with a few other players needing to be replaced.

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