This was not a good look, not at this time of the year, not from that No. 6 Notre Dame women’s basketball team.
Not after what this season with this team had long been.
Not because that for the second time in four games, head coach Niele Ivey needed more than an hour in the locker room to be with her players and address issues that arose from another loss where the Irish looked so un-Irish.
That locker room door again stayed closed for a long time. A looooonnnng time. Down the hall, and down a set of stairs in a First Horizon Coliseum theater, the media waited. And waited. And waited. It was 79 minutes after the February 27 loss at home to Florida State before Ivey appeared. It was just over an hour on Saturday.
Ivey can take all the time she wants to decompress and preach to her squad and do whatever it is she does with her staff after those 40 minutes on the basketball court. She could choose not to talk at all if that’s what she chooses. Not ideal, but understandable.
