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2025 – 2026
The season: The 2025–26 Irish went 25–11, tied for fifth in the ACC at 12–6, and took the season in two pieces: a bruising autumn that included a 93–54 loss to Michigan in Detroit on November 15 and an 85–47 loss at Connecticut, and a 12–3 close from February 1 that carried them through the ACC tournament to a semifinal (a 65–63 loss to Duke) and into the NCAA tournament as a No. 6 seed.
The run: Notre Dame beat Fairfield 79–60, won at Ohio State 83–73, and beat Vanderbilt 67–64 to reach the Elite Eight for the first time since 2019. The run ended on March 29, 2026, at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, against the No. 1 seed and the program's oldest measuring stick: Connecticut 70, Notre Dame 52. The game is also the latest entry in the rivalry ledger printed below.
Hidalgo's junior year: Hidalgo scored 909 points — the Notre Dame and ACC single-season records — and averaged 25.3 points a game (one 2026–27 preview prints 25.2; the record book's 25.3 is the figure used here). She stole the ball 202 times, the NCAA single-season record: in the university's account she is the only player in NCAA history, men's or women's, with 200 steals in a season. She was the ACC player of the year for the second straight season and its defensive player of the year for the third, won the 2026 Naismith Defensive Player of the Year award and the Nancy Lieberman Award — Diggins's award, thirteen years after her second — and finished the season with 2,460 career points, second only to Ogunbowale, having scored in double figures in all 103 of her college games, the longest active such streak in the nation at the season's end in the record book's account.
Sources:
- University record book (2025–26 edition) — the season's results and the NCAA run (Fairfield, Ohio State, Vanderbilt, Connecticut 52–70, March 29, 2026, Fort Worth); Hidalgo's season and career figures and honors.
- University game accounts — the Michigan (54–93) and Connecticut (47–85) losses; the 12–3 close; the ACC semifinal against Duke (63–65).