UConn and Notre Dame meet for 1st time with women's Final Four on line, after playing there 8 times

“This is kind of crazy it's the first time around to get to the Final Four,” said sixth-year Irish head coach Niele Ivey, who has been part of all those games.

“When we would look at the brackets, it used to be like that with Tennessee too, you would look at the bracket and you would go, OK, when could we possibly face them? Most of the time, because of the high seeds that we were, it would end up being in the Final Four,” UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. “For us that became, we knew at some point we would have to beat them if we wanted to win a national championship.”

Sixth-seeded Notre Dame (25-10) is in its first Elite Eight since 2019 and taking on the defending national champion and top overall seed Huskies (37-0), who have a 53-game winning streak. The winner of Sunday's final in Fort Worth Regional 1 will fill the first slot for the Final Four in Phoenix.

That will be the 57th all-time meeting, and second this season after UConn won 85-47 at home Jan. 19 in the most-lopsided game in the series that the Huskies lead 40-16.

It will also be the 20th time they play outside the regular season. Along with their NCAA tourney games, they met 11 times in Big East tournament games through 2013 before Notre Dame left that league, with the Huskies winning six of the seven title games they played.

“The rivalry started way before we even got here,” said second-team AP All-America guard Hannah Hidalgo, who had a 31-point triple-double in Notre Dame's Sweet 16 win over Vanderbilt. “We understand how big it is.”

Some Final Four history

UConn and Notre Dame met in the Final Four seven times between 2011 and 2019. There was a stretch of five in a row from 2011-15, that span capped by back-to-back national championship games the Huskies won over the Irish. The last were back-to-back semifinal games Notre Dame won in 2018 and 2019, the first in overtime on the way to the Irish's last national title before losing in the championship game to Baylor the following year.

Ivey was an assistant coach on Muffet McGraw's staff for all of those games. But in 2001, Ivey was a senior point guard who had a game-high 21 points in a semifinal win over UConn in her hometown of St. Louis before the Irish beat Purdue for the national title.

“A lot of great memories. The biggest one for me is as a player winning in my hometown of St. Louis,” Ivey said. “It was our first championship, but it was also 10 minutes away from where I grew up. My whole family was there. It was a special moment, and this was my last game, my fifth year. So to go out with a championship was really, really special. Obviously that was in the semifinal round, but that Final Four, playing UConn to get to the championship game, was probably my most memorable experience.”

Don't want to let Hidalgo steal the show

Hidalgo is second nationally with 26.1 points a game, and the junior guard is also the nation leader with an NCAA single-season record 199 steals (5.7 a game). Her 10 Friday pushed her NCAA Tournament total to 26, already a record in March Madness.

“Have you seen Hannah Hidalgo play,” Auriemma responded with a chuckle when asked what is making Notre Dame so good right now. “Man, I don’t think I’ve seen a performance like what she had (Friday) a long, long time. She’s, like, the Lawrence Taylor of basketball. People probably too young to remember Lawrence Taylor, but Lawrence Taylor played linebacker for the Giants, and if he was in the next room and threw the ball to one of you guys, he would intercept it.”

Along with the 31 points and 10 steals against the second-seeded Commodores, Hidalgo had 11 rebounds and seven assists, the last when the 5-foot-6 sparkplug soared between two defenders to catch an inbound pass, then flipped a bounce pass to Cassandre Prosper for the go-ahead layup with 22 seconds remaining.

Not expecting a repeat from January

Notre Dame, then without guard KK Bransford, missed its first seven shots and trailed throughout in the first meeting against the Huskies this season. Hidalgo finished with 16 points after none in the first quarter.

“I think they have more chemistry, have more time playing together and playing off each other,” said UConn All-America forward Sarah Strong, who had 18 points and 11 rebounds in that game.

“We’re both very different teams since the last time we played, so we have to go out not expecting the same outcome, the same game as last time,” said All-America guard Azzi Fudd, who had 15 points. “Fresh mindset.”

AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-womens-bracket and coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness