Notre Dame women’s basketball meltdown fueling major March collapse fears

The way that the Notre Dame women’s basketball team finished the regular season and now ended its stay in the ACC tournament is baffling. And head coach Niele Ivey needs to find answers to all the questions that have popped up in the last couple of weeks if she wants to get past the Sweet 16. At the moment, it’s unclear if the team as its clearly playing will get past the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

The Fighting Irish, with one of the best offenses in the country, saw it struggle mightily against the Duke Blue Devils on Saturday afternoon. It’s not that the ACC rival is a bad team, they’re ranked 11th in the country. But it was the kind of game that a dialed-in Notre Dame squad would have dispatched. They beat them by 15 the last time the two squads met.

The Notre Dame women’s basketball team needs to find a way to play tougher and play better. Their third loss in five games is part of the problem. That they didn’t look good in those two wins is also a problem. Losing to Duke 61-56 is about as they’ve played over this stretch.

Notre Dame women’s basketball playing its worst ball down the stretch

Duke (25-7) will meet No. 7 N.C. State, the top seed, in the Atlantic Coast Conference title game on Sunday. It's the Blue Devils' first time playing in that game in eight years. N.C. State beat No. 14 North Carolina 66-55 in the first semifinal matchup. The Wolfpack, contrary to Ivey’s squad, has been playing some of its best basketball of the season.

Now, a Notre Dame women’s basketball team that spent most of the season looking like a No. 1 seed, will have to sit and wait until Sunday night to see what seed they got and who they will match up with. It’s not out of the realm of possibility at this point that they could fall to either a No. 3 or No. 4 seed.