The AP released its much anticipated preseason Top 25 on Tuesday, and Notre Dame checks in as a top-10 team for the second consecutive season. The Irish will face off against South Carolina on Nov. 6 as the No. 10 team in the nation.
Notre Dame began last season ranked No. 9 nationally and finished the year at No. 10. The Irish landed at No. 11 in the final Coaches Poll.
Karen and Kevin Keyes Family Head Coach Niele Ivey’s team is coming off of a 27-6 season (15-3 ACC) during which the group won the ACC regular season title and made a second consecutive Sweet 16 despite losing starters Olivia Miles and Dara Mabrey during the regular season.
As for this year, Notre Dame returns its core and made a few key additions. In total, 82.7 percent of last year’s scoring is back on the roster, the only losses being Mabrey and center Lauren Ebo. All-ACC First Team members Olivia Miles and Sonia Citron are now juniors, and Second-Team forward Maddy Westbeld is in her fourth year.
The Irish already added five-star guard Cassandre Prosper as an early enrollee last December, but Ivey welcomes two additional five star guards this fall in Hannah Hidalgo and Emma Risch. Notre Dame is the only team in the nation that signed three top-20 recruits, per ESPN’s HoopGurlz Recruiting Rankings. Hidalgo has already proven to be a menace on both ends of the floor, lighting up the scoreboard in practice and notching steal after steal. Miles and Citron accounted for 226 steals over the last two years, the most of any duo in the ACC over that span, and adding Hidalgo into the mix will create a lethal defensive combination.
Risch, a three-point specialist, is a threat from deep for an Irish team that struggled from downtown last season. Bolstering those numbers is a priority for Ivey this year, as is evidenced by adding both Risch and Fordham transfer Anna DeWolfe. DeWolfe averaged 18.4 points per game last year, second in the Atlantic 10.
The ACC is set to be one of the toughest conferences in the country once again, as it has five ranked teams in the preseason Top 25: Virginia Tech (8), Notre Dame, North Carolina (16), Louisville (17) and Florida State (18). In its non-conference schedule, Notre Dame will see four currently ranked teams: UConn (2), South Carolina (6), Tennessee (11) and Illinois (23).
Notre Dame faces Purdue Northwest in an Oct. 30 exhibition before heading to Paris to open against South Carolina. The exhibition will be at 7 p.m.