Watch enough Hannah Hidalgo games on TV, and you’ll grow used to hearing that she plays with “joy.” Glee, I could see. Abandon, sure. But joy feels too clean and delicate a word to describe the way Hidalgo conducts herself on a basketball court: the mean mug, the wagged tongue, after a parabolic pull-up three. The screams. The screams! There is so much screaming: when she finds a teammate on the run, when she launches into someone’s shoulder at the rim, topples to the ground, and draws a foul. They convince me less of her “love for the game” than of her pure, uncut hatred for opponents.
Forget shoulder shrugs or sly smiles; Hidalgo exists on a higher plane of expression. Never has a player been so delighted to demoralize. (Perhaps I’m projecting this malevolence on account of her Instagram stories, which range from bland disavowals of same-sex marriage to the somewhat more intriguing claim that Britney Spears, Katy Perry, Beyoncé and Ariana Grande “ARE ALL WITCHES” whose music is “satanic inspired” and “designed to pull you away from the creator.” Give her credit for consistency: She’s a nut on and off the court.)
Now that Hidalgo has beat and outplayed the other two favorites in head-to-head matchups—she put up 24 points, eight assists and five steals in a 74-61 win over USC in late November—it’s fair to say Notre Dame’s 5-foot-6 sophomore point guard is as good a bet as JuJu Watkins and Paige Bueckers to win National Player of the Year. Thursday night in a 79-68 home win against No. 2 UConn, Hidalgo came two assists short of a triple-double. She finished with 29 points and six threes in her 44th game, becoming the fastest Notre Dame player to reach 1,000 career points.
Given the company on the leaderboard, that’s saying something. You didn’t have to search far to be reminded of No. 8 Notre Dame’s bona fides as a factory of maniac hoopers. Sitting courtside last night were Jewell Loyd, Marina Mabrey, Skylar Diggins-Smith, and Arike Ogunbowale, each of them a testament to their alma mater’s Guard U reputation. While they vary in their individual commitment to “defense,” “efficiency,” or “passing,” what all those players share is a certain force, a way of completely reorienting the energy of whatever court or sideline they happen to be on.
Hidalgo is no different, though her 42.6 percent three-point shooting this year is plenty efficient, and “commitment” to defense probably understates things. Geno Auriemma, whose UConn teams have now lost three straight games to their modern rival, said Hidalgo’s power was “the way she attacks everything that she does. The way she attacks your defense. The way when she’s on defense, she attacks your offense.” Alongside big senior guard Sonia Citron, a prospect in this year’s WNBA draft, the sophomore puts opposing offenses into precisely the kind of hell you might enter if you listen to too many Ariana Grande songs. For 5-foot-6, Hidalgo does fine work as an on-ball defender—impressively, she’s usually able to do this without much fouling—but she’s at her best when she trusts Citron with the on-ball heavy lifting and freelances in passing lanes. Putting the ball on the floor becomes the only option against the Fighting Irish. Entering Thursday’s game, UConn averaged just over 22 assists; against Notre Dame, the Huskies could only cobble together 10.
Even a player who can put the ball on the floor and get results might not be enough. Bueckers finished with 25 points on 11-of-20 shooting, but with freshman standout Sarah Strong in foul trouble for much of the night, there were few other scoring options. In the team's first loss of the season, UConn clearly missed the outside shooting of Azzi Fudd, who missed the game with a knee injury. (Not the injury she missed last season with, but a new and different injury. Oh, Azzi.)
Notre Dame can certainly relate to the injury woes. The team's still waiting to get back grad senior and solid rebounder Maddy Westbeld later this season. Senior Olivia Miles, a likely WNBA lottery pick, forms the best backcourt in the nation when she plays with Hidalgo. But Miles missed all of last season with a torn ACL she suffered as a sophomore, and she limped through much of this game against UConn after rolling her ankle in the first quarter. If Notre Dame learned something from the injury crisis that limited its rotation to six players, it’s that you can never have enough depth. One of the standouts in this game was grad transfer Liatu King, an uber-athletic forward whose midrange jumpers and hustle on the boards gave Notre Dame an extra source of energy. As if Hidalgo weren't enough.
