What Maddy Westbeld told Olivia Miles when the Notre Dame women’s basketball season ended

What’s the status of Notre Dame point guard Olivia Miles four months before the start of her senior season? Fifth year forward Maddy Westbeld knows. She’s seen the state of Miles’ more days than not since Fighting Irish summer practices started in early June.

“New and improved,” Westbeld said of Miles, who did not play at all last season while rehabbing a significant knee injury. “Oh my gosh, I’m so excited. The sky is literally the limit.”

That’s the surface-level stuff. We’ve known for quite some time now that Miles was all but fully cleared sometime during the latter half of the 2023-24 season. At that point, a decision had been made to just sit out the entire season and take a redshirt. She’s got two years of eligibility remaining as a result.

That’s two years to run Notre Dame’s on-floor operations. According to Westbeld, it is Miles who will do that — not Associated Press First Team All-American Hannah Hidalgo, who is one of five freshmen to ever earn that honor.

Hidalgo is plenty capable of playing the point in do-it-all fashion. She showed that in year one and will conceivably only get better as a distributor, facilitator, etc. as the years go on. But we can’t forget how effective Miles is when it comes to those responsibilities just because we haven’t seen her play in a game in a year and a half.

“She was playing in practices with us before the season had ended, and it wasn’t shortly after we lost we had a conversion like, ‘This is your team again,’” Westbeld told Blue & Gold Illustrated.

That’s an extremely enlightening, pointed quote from Westbeld, a half-a-decade staple at Notre Dame team. Hidalgo took the reins and ran with them every-so-vigorously. She’s one of the best players in the game right now. People pay the price of admission to watch her play. She’s bound to do something incredible each time she steps on the court, and everything she accomplishes is in the name of competition. She loves to win. Hates to lose. Gaudy statistics are a reflection of those facts more than they are an attempt to showboat.

Everyone at Notre Dame believes Miles — the Irish’s all-time leader in triple-doubles, men or women — is that same type of player. Before Hidalgo raised eyebrows, Miles did. Before Hidalgo mean-mugged after a big basket, Miles did.

Hidalgo is top of mind for what she did last season, and rightfully so. Miles is on the back burner, meanwhile, because it’s been 502 days since anyone has seen her play in an actual game. That’s how perception cycles in sports — or anything, really — work; it’s always “what have you done for me lately.”

But anyone who, like Westbeld, saw Miles play for two years before she got injured knows she’s a total floor general. Expect to see her running the show even after Hidalgo became the star of it — and then some — last season. Hidalgo will still bring the ball up the floor quite a bit, but Miles is the closest thing to a pure point guard as it gets.

“It’s just exciting to see her to be so eager on the court, to lead this team, to do all of the little things,” Westbeld said. “Her perspective of the game is so much grown. Of course, she was tremendous before. But the way she sees the game, the way she sees teammates — she’s just a professional. She’s just a pro. The sky is the limit.”

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