SOUTH BEND, Ind. — There were two ways to look at Skylar Diggins tumbling head first into a stanchion Tuesday night. One view was sheer, undiluted terror over Notre Dame losing an All-American guard to debilitating injury during an NCAA tournament run.
The other was that nothing worse was going to happen to the top-seeded Irish by then. Diggins popped up from the hard foul, and her team did likewise from earlier ugliness, routing No. 8-seed California with a torrid second half en route to a 73-62 victory.
A rugged halftime tie turned into a 17-point lead not eight minutes after intermission thanks to suffocating defense that forced 12 second-half Cal turnovers. That sent Notre Dame (32-3) to Raleigh, N.C., for a third straight Sweet 16 and a Sunday tilt with fifth-seeded St. Bonaventure (31-3).
“We’re an older team, we’ve been here before, we play a lot better when we keep our composure,” said forward Devereaux Peters, who posted 11 points, 14 rebounds and a career-high seven blocks. “We knew what to fix and came out and did it.”
It was an all-out scuffle by halftime. The kinetic Notre Dame offense fired at a mere 34.5 percent clip and coughed up six turnovers. Only 17 first-half points from Natalie Novosel (who had 28 overall) and a steady diet of free throws preempted calamity.
“That was as good as anyone has played us defensively in a while,” Irish coach Muffet McGraw said. “We had to work for everything we got.”
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Cal’s late 8-0 first-half run officially stamped matters as interesting. Then came the all-too-predictable unraveling by the team on hostile ground.
Notre Dame forced nine turnovers in the first eight minutes of the second half and rattled off a 23-6 run that created the 17-point bulge and, basically, erased all doubt. California closed to nine with 76 seconds left, but Novosel hit six straight free throws to quell the uprising in the final game at Purcell Pavilion for the season.
“As seniors, we knew this was not going to be our last game played,” Novosel said of the halftime mood. “We knew we wanted to go out with a bang.”