Vanderbilt simply couldn’t keep up with the junior guard, who had a triple-double in Notre Dame’s upset win to send her team to the Elite Eight in the women’s NCAA tournament.
FORT WORTH, Texas — Hannah Hidalgo is so quick that she has already finished reading this story. Multiply quick hands by quick feet and quick thinking and you have H-squared, the Notre Dame guard who just ended Vanderbilt’s season.
Hidalgo scored a game-high 31 points in the Fighting Irish’s 67–64 win, and that was her third most impressive stat of the day. Hidalgo had 11 rebounds, even though she is only 5-foot-6. She also had 10 steals, even though she only has three hands.Hidalgo grabbed hold of the Commodores from the opening tip and spent the rest of the afternoon shaking them until their pockets were empty and they couldn’t see straight. The Commodores came into the game averaging 13 turnovers per game. They had 10 in the first quarter alone. Hidalgo said she realized early that, “I can get in their head and make them continue to turn the ball over.” Hidalgo played 39 minutes, and she made every second count. She stole passes and swiped balls from dribblers. Vandy coach Shea Ralph said her team was “giving them layups, throwing the ball all over the place,” but there was a reason for that. The Commodores were completely discombobulated, and Hidalgo is far and away the nation’s best discombobulater. “I’m a point guard,” Hidalgo said afterward. “So I know how difficult it is to run a team and set the plays while also being pressured.” Fair enough. But Hidalgo has no clue what it is like to face Hannah Hidalgo. There is nobody in the sport like her.fast and quite another to play fast. Basketball is an endless series of simultaneous independent movements; a lot of great athletes can’t keep up with it. What makes Hidalgo so special is not just that she is always the quickest, speediest player on the floor; it’s that she does everything at exactly the right speed for the moment. She changes pace on the break. She waits patiently for the right moment to intercept the ball. “She’s a great player,” said Vanderbilt point guard Aubrey Galvan, who got Hidalgo-ed into six turnovers. “All credit to her. She digs in on defense, which you don’t see a lot.” When the shot clock was winding down on Notre Dame, Hidalgo recognized it and fired up a shot. When Blakes contorted for a layup and missed, Hidalgo grabbed the rebound, drove downcourt quickly but deliberately, and scored. Twice, she got drilled by larger players, including once by Vandy’s Aiyana Mitchell on a moving screen. Hidalgo just kept going. The end of the game was vintage Hidalgo, and it didn’t involve any one of those 31 points, 11 rebounds or 10 steals. With 26 seconds left and the game tied, Notre Dame’s KK Bransford was trying to inbound the ball, but Vanderbilt’s defense was tight. The Fighting Irish were out of timeouts. They could not afford a five-second violation. Bransford tossed the ballHidalgo leapt between two Vanderbilt defenders, grabbed the ball, and took one dribble. Two more Commodores tried to trap her. Hidalgo wrapped a bounce pass around the back of 6'4" Justine Pissott to Cassandre Prosper for a layup. “She’s just a special player,” Ralph said. “You have to respect how hard she plays all the time. She gave the effort that was needed to win the game for her team, on both sides of the ball. Kudos to her.” In her three tournament games, Hidalgo has averaged 26.7 points, 11 rebounds, five assists and 8.7 steals. She just outplayed Blakes and Ohio State’s Jaloni Cambridge in consecutive NCAA tournament games. Hidalgo has been the best player in the whole tournament, and easily the most valuable. “I was telling the girls: ‘This is not our last game playing together. We’re going to figure it out, and we’re going to win,’ ” Hidalgo said. When Hidalgo speaks, the Irish believe. When she competes, they try to match her energy. When they need someone to make a play, she makes three. At some point in this tournament, the Fighting Irish will run into a better team. They will not run into a better player.Michael Rosenberg is a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, covering any and all sports. He writes columns, profiles and feature stories and has covered almost every major sporting event. He joined SI in 2012 after working at the Detroit Free Press for 13 years, eight of them as a columnist. Rosenberg is the author of “War As They Knew It: Woody Hayes, Bo Schembechler and America in a Time of Unrest.” Several of his stories also have been published in collections of the year’s best sportswriting. He is married with three children.
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