In a season of change for South Jersey’s Hannah Hidalgo, she led Notre Dame to new heights

FORT WORTH, Texas — Some things remain the same, even years later. Phrases like “made history” or “star” have become part and parcel of Hannah Hidalgo’s basketball career, from her time at Paul VI High School in Haddon Township or on the AAU circuit in Philadelphia and beyond.

But Hidalgo has changed in her three seasons at Notre Dame, perhaps no more so than this junior year. Surrounded by new faces, it was on her to be the team’s veteran voice. And though the Fighting Irish (25-11) lost more games than they had since 2019-20, Muffet McGraw’s final season as coach, they also reached heights untouched for the better part of a decade. Behind a pair of upsets, Notre Dame, as a No. 6 seed, reached the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2019. And though its run ended with a 70-52 loss to top-seeded Connecticut on Sunday at Dickies Arena, Hidalgo was grateful.

This season, she got to know her teammates individually, on and off the court, and tailor her leadership style accordingly. The result was a team that exudes joy, coach Niele Ivey said.

“They’ve helped me grow my patience and just my understanding, just the way I think,” Hidalgo said. “I think they’ve helped me in so many different levels. All credit to my teammates. … I wouldn’t want to go to war with anybody else in this world.”

So how does that differ from her playing days in South Jersey?

“I wouldn’t say I was the best leader in high school,” said Hidalgo, who’s from Merchantville. “I had my ways of leading, and it worked for my team. It was a little more of motivating them and trash talking and things like that. … It’s a little different as I’ve gotten older. It’s not the same way of leading. So it took me a while to understand that. My teammates react a little differently to certain things, and I have to figure out how to connect with each and every single one of my teammates.”

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And as Hidalgo has changed throughout her three seasons in South Bend, Ind., Ivey has evolved right along with her point guard.

“I’ve learned how to allow her to be her,” Ivey told reporters ahead of Sunday’s game. “That’s her superpower, the way that she defends. … We’ve learned how to, and the team has learned how to, adjust with the way she impacts the ball and is disruptive. Everybody on the floor wants to play defense with her, so I think that’s the biggest difference. The way that she defends. They all rotate outside of her, but she is a high risk, high reward. I knew that coming in, and I’ve watched her blossom and develop, and she’s gotten even brighter.”

Take this run for example. Coming off a win in which she broke the NCAA’s single-season steals record and picked up a 30-point triple-double, Hidalgo helped keep the Irish in the game against UConn, even as she was held scoreless in the first quarter. She responded with nine second-quarter points and finished with 22, breaking the ACC single-season scoring record in the process, but through her personal drought, she made an impact defensively and on the boards. Even from the game’s first possession, when she swooped in to pluck the ball from the Huskies to help set up one of Notre Dame’s fleeting first-quarter leads.

“It’s rare that you find a player that is involved in every single play to the point where you have to — whoever she’s guarding, you have to go hide them someplace hoping that she’s not involved in that play, and she still manages to be involved in the play somehow, some way,” UConn coach Geno Auriemma said.

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Hidalgo, who leads the nation in steals (5.7 per game) and is third in scoring (25.3 points per game), also finished with 11 rebounds for her 10th double-double of the season, and added three steals, but also just three assists to five turnovers.

The Huskies (38-0) kept Hidalgo and the Irish out of sync, even when their own shots weren’t falling — neither team scored a point for over four minutes of the third quarter — but after Jana El Alfy finally broke through, Hidalgo responded with an and-one to cut her team’s deficit to 40-33 with 2 minutes, 42 seconds left in the period. UConn, led by Sarah Strong (21 points, seven rebounds) and Blanca Quiñnonez (20 points, eight rebounds), put the game out of reach not long after that, but Hidalgo’s presence was undeniable as she crashed to the floor, battling for loose balls with her team down double digits and just seconds left to her season.

“I’ll credit the entire team. They all fought,” Ivey said. “It’s contagious with Hannah doing it, but we said we’re going to fight all the way until that buzzer sounds, and that’s just the heart of this group. They fought the entire time, but I think that’s just, again, because they want to leave it all on the floor, and I feel like they did.”

Now Hidalgo has one more season’s worth of growth in college, so what’s next?

“It gives us motivation,” said Hidalgo, who was named to the all-Fort Worth 1 Regional team alongside Strong, Quiñonez, Azzi Fudd, and Vanderbilt’s Aubrey Galvan. “To be able to [reach the Elite Eight] with this team, when nobody thought we were going to get past the second round … but we know that the people coming in next year, they’re going to have to raise their level because we know what it feels like to get to the Elite Eight, and now we’re going to have to get over that hump.”

In a way, Auriemma has known the likes of Hidalgo decades before she was born. The coaching legend grew up in Norristown, graduated from Bishop Kenrick High School and West Chester University, and got his start with the Rams and other area schools before his career took off at UConn.

So he knows the area in which Hidalgo grew up — “that’s just Philadelphia East, right?” and is familiar with the type of player it produces.

“Not only offensively can she get wherever she wants to go, get any shot she wants, but defensively she probably causes more problems for your offense than any player in the country,” he said.

So what’s it like to game plan against that?

“I mean, you can deal with a shot blocker,” he said. “You can deal with that, but you cannot deal with someone that, every time you’re dribbling the ball, you’re more worried about where she is than who you are passing it to. I just love watching her. I asked her after the game if she was old enough to go pro, and she said, ‘No, I want one more shot at you guys.’”