Notre Dame Women’s Basketball Advances To Elite 8 After Win Over Texas A&M

Our normal game recap was lost due to technical difficulties. Here is a quick thought for y’all

TOE TO TOE

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish arrived in Chicago with 11 straight wins — 11 straight BLOWOUT wins. At some point in this tournament they were going to be challenged, and the Texas A&M Aggies were more than up for the task.

Chennedy Carter came to play. The 5’7” guard plays bigger than what she looks, and as she drains shot after shot, hearts were being punched everywhere as we waited for that tall arching shot to come down. It came down inside the rim a lot, and she put up 35 points on the board for her trouble.

It wasn’t just the points she scored, Carter helped lift her team up to the point that they were going punch for punch with the 1 seed Irish.

It just wasn’t enough.

Arike Ogunbowale played the part across from Carter, and she too rose to the occasion in this Elite 8 matchup. She almost matched Carter in points with 34 (career high), but came through more times than Carter in those “big moment” situations.

Arike played the part of veteran superstar on top of the mountain as Chennedy played that part of charging young player gunning for the Queen. After the game, Carter — who never gave up an inch during the game to Arike or Marina Mabrey or anyone, admitted that Ogunbowale was a good player that took good shots.

Ogunbowale was gracious in victory as she didn’t complain about the bullshit technical foul that was called against her late. She merely mentioned that she let her emotions get the best of her.

Like how could they not?

This was an intensely physical, and emotional battle from the opening tip until the final horn. The Aggies and Carter were a very worthy opponent, but once again, Notre Dame showed the country that they are one of the best in the land — and will give every bit of themselves to achieve their goal.

It was brutal, and it was fantastic. Rakes summed it up well (before the game was even over) with this Tweet:

UP NEXT

The Irish will take on the Stanford Cardinal on Monday night in Chicago at 9:00 PM EST for the right to advance to the Final Four.