Inside the players-only meeting that has Notre Dame back in the Sweet 16

Hannah Hidalgo trooped to the Notre Dame bench at Purcell Pavilion with a flat look on her face, shaking her head. Niele Ivey leaned in to say something to her. Hidalgo didn’t seem to acknowledge her head coach.

She just kept walking. And kept shaking her head.

It was the first time the eventual ACC Rookie of the Year, ACC Defensive Player of the Year and ACC Tournament Most Valuable Player fouled out, 24 games into her career. It’s still the only time she’s fouled out through 34 with the No. 2 seed Fighting Irish (28-6) in the Sweet 16 Friday against No. 3 seed Oregon State (26-7).

Notre Dame was losing to NC State by 16 with just over three minutes left to play. Hidalgo fouling out was inconsequential. The Irish lost by the same margin as when she exited. But her leaving the game in the manner she did coupled with the shape the game itself was in created an unavoidable writing on the wall.

Something needed to change. So Maddy Westbeld sought change.

The senior center sent to a text to all of her teammates — no coaches — within hours after the loss. With the Irish sitting at 18-6 overall and 8-5 in conference play, the season was on the verge of spiraling completely out of control with a trip to Duke next on the schedule. It was time for a closed-door, players-only meeting.

Westbeld conducted it. Notre Dame hasn’t lost since.

“We were going through a lot of ups and downs at that time,” Hidalgo said. “We were going through a lot of adversity. It was right that we needed to figure out where we were as a team. A lot of people weren’t locked in.”

Hidalgo didn’t namedrop anyone but herself. But anybody in the locker room would do the same. They all knew their potential but didn’t know how to collectively tap into it.

“It was about taking accountability for ourselves and figuring out the things each of us needed to do individually in order for our team to be better,” sophomore guard KK Bransford said.

That’s where Westbeld, senior leader she is, stepped in.

Westbeld’s message was a far more serious and complex than Jackie Moon ‘s plea from the front of the bus in “Semi-Pro” — “Everybody love everybody.” But it adhered to the same fundamental principles. There was a feeling of disconnect reverberating from one player to another and on down the line, like a game of telephone gone wrong.

Westbeld’s insistence was for a more unified joining of forces working toward a common goal. Starting in practices, not just on game days. Consider it a culture reset.

“We just needed to make sure we were all on the same page,” Westbeld said. “We know what this name on our chest means, and I think we just needed a reminder of what that was. It’s grit, it’s toughness. It’s the little things that we need to do.”

“It takes a lot of pride and a lot of maturity for her to realize that’s what we needed,” graduate student guard Anna DeWolfe said. “A lot of respect to her because that’s not an easy thing to do. But as a leader you can’t always do the easiest thing. You have to do the hard things.”

For Westbeld that meant not being afraid to tell her teammates what they were doing — or weren’t doing — wasn’t cutting it. They needed to be better. In every way. She needed to be better at setting the tone.

The turnaround had to start as soon as the practices leading into the next game against the Blue Devils, and it did. The Irish went on the road and beat a team that just upset No. 2 seed Ohio State. That was the first of Notre Dame’s 10 consecutive victories. Five of them have been in do-or-die tournament games.

The locking in Hidalgo alluded to seemingly transpired overnight. It’s been a more tedious, drawn-out process than zero losses since Feb. 15 suggests, but sometimes an earnest invocation can reap immediate rewards.

“We want to win,” Hidalgo said. “Everyone wants to win. We finally all came together. It was individual pride. Everyone took it upon themselves to fix what they needed to fix first. And once everybody fixed themselves individually, we were able to combine that as a team and work together after that.”

It’d be inaccurate to say the Irish are rolling and haven’t looked back. They have. Quite a bit. Sometimes you’ve got to peer over your shoulder to see how far you’ve come and to make sure you don’t go back to that bad place. The loss to the Wolfpack was the bad place, inflection point in Notre Dame’s season. But it didn’t define it.

Everything that’s happened since has.

“We talked to each other and we were just like, ‘We need to figure it out because this is not how our season’s going to go,'” junior guard Sonia Citron added. “It was after that game that we really just took the steps we needed to to get back on the same page, and we did that.”

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