The No. 3 seed Notre Dame Fighting Irish women’s basketball team saw their Sweet 16 run come to an end against Hailey Van Lith and No. 2 TCU in a 71-62 loss. After the loss, Notre Dame star Olibvia Miles bypassed the 2025 WNBA Draft and entered the transfer portal in a stunning move.
Miles was widely projected as the No. 2 pick in the draft behind UConn’s Paige Bueckers, so her staying and entering the portal was quite a surprise.
Unfortunately, things got worse for Notre Dame from that point on. With Miles leaving a massive hole on the roster, the Irish are also losing four starters and some other key reserve players.
Along with Miles, three other Notre Dame starters are not returning in 2025-26 since they are out of eligibility. Maddy Westbeld, Liatu King and Sonia Citron are those players, as Gayle Bell of The South Bend Tribune wrote. Key reserve Liza Karlen is also out of eligibility, so the roster is taking hit after hit just days after a Sweet 16 appearance.
That leaves All-American Hannah Hidalgo as the only returning starter for a Notre Dame team that had high hopes this year. To make things even worse, Notre Dame currently has just five scholarship players on the roster for next season, as Tyler Horka of On3 mentioned.
Those five are Leah Macy, KK Bransford, Hannah Hidalgo, Cassandre Prosper and Kylee Watson. Among them, both Bransford and Watson redshirted this past season. With Macy recovering from a knee injury, that means only Hidalgo and Prosper played this past season, so there is a ton of roster turnover early on for Notre Dame.
Notre Dame also saw freshman Kate Koval enter the portal, and she was one of just eight players to see action in the Sweet 16 loss to TCU.
For a team that went 28-6 and made the Sweet 16, it’s a crushing start to the offseason, and head coach Niele Ivey has a lot of work to do despite four straight NCAA Tournament appearances.
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