BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — The vitriol rained down on Hailey Van Lith last season. She had transferred to LSU and just wasn’t the same player who averaged nearly 20 points as a junior at Louisville the season before. She had a career-low shooting percentage, and her points per game dropped to under 12, barely over her output from her freshman year.
The criticism piled up, and Van Lith dealt with mental health issues that weighed heavily on her even before she arrived in Baton Rouge. She transferred again this season, to TCU, and has helped turn around a Horned Frogs program that hadn’t made the NCAA tournament since 2010. In the days before a Sweet 16 game against Notre Dame, Van Lith admitted she had been suicidal and heavily medicated earlier in her college career, even when she was playing well.
All of that led to Saturday, when Van Lith set TCU’s single-season points record and powered a come-from-behind, 71-62 victory that sent the Horned Frogs to the Elite Eight for the first time. She became the first player in NCAA tournament history — men’s or women’s — to reach the Elite Eight with three different schools. And when she takes the court against top-seeded Texas on Monday in the Birmingham Region 3 final, she will play in her fifth region final in five seasons.
“Five Elite Eights [with] three different schools is insane,” TCU Coach Mark Campbell said, responding to a reporter who dubbed Van Lith “Miss March” during a postgame news conference. “The ‘Miss March’ is deserved and earned. She gets that title, and she can own it.”
Van Lith finished with a game-high 26 points to go with nine rebounds and four assists Saturday. Known more for her offense than her defense, she also had a steal and a block while putting together critical defensive moments during TCU’s second-half rally.
The second-seeded Horned Frogs (34-3) trailed by nine in the third quarter when Van Lith led a 14-4 run to give TCU a lead for the first time since the first quarter. Third-seeded Notre Dame went back up by one to end the third, but Van Lith wasn’t done.
“At this point, I just have ultimate confidence and faith in myself to compete at an intense level,” Van Lith said. “What I’ve learned through my experience in these tournaments is you can’t always ask yourself to make every shot, but if you’re willing to compete and lay it all out there every game, you’re giving yourself a better shot than a lot of other people are out there.”
First, she saw a defender go under a screen and didn’t hesitate. The senior guard immediately rose up to bury a three-pointer to give TCU a six-point lead that forced Notre Dame to call a timeout.
Before heading to the bench, Van Lith kissed her fingers and shook her head. Teammate Sedona Prince came over and gave the Stephen Curry “night night” gesture with her hands.
About four minutes later, Van Lith was stuck on an island, spinning in a circle, desperately looking for a teammate with the shot clock winding down. Finding no one, she took it upon herself and knocked down another three to put TCU up by eight.
At one point, blood trickled down her knee and officials stopped play for her to be treated by the medical staff. That was the only thing that could slow her down.
Prince contributed 21 points, six rebounds, six blocks and four assists. Madison Conner added 13 points.
“Going into this game, I really was just going to have no regrets,” Van Lith said. “I wasn’t going to put any pressure on myself to necessarily win. I was going to go out there and play with the joy that God gave me. That’s what makes this team so special — it’s not like we have to win. It’s, ‘Let’s go out there and just have fun and have joy and play the game that we love,’ and that’s the part I love about it.”
Notre Dame’s season ends with a 28-6 record and disappointment. After losing in the Sweet 16 in each of the past three seasons, the Fighting Irish seemed poised to push further this season with four presumed future WNBA players in their starting lineup. Notre Dame was ranked No. 1 in the nation in February but lost two of its final three regular season games and was bounced in the ACC tournament semifinals by Duke. Those end-of-season woes dropped the Fighting Irish to a No. 3 seed in the NCAA tournament before TCU sent them home for good.
“I am just really grateful for what they have done for me and for our program,” Notre Dame Coach Niele Ivey said of her senior class, which includes probable WNBA draft picks Olivia Miles, Sonia Cintron and Maddy Westbeld. “It’s a resurgence of the program taking over, and they’ve left it better than what they came in with. I’m really grateful — such an incredible group of young women.”
A 9-0 run early in the third quarter gave Notre Dame a 44-35 lead as Miles, playing on a bum ankle, and star sophomore Hannah Hidalgo (15 points) shined. At one point, Miles (10 points) grabbed a rebound and took off the other way. Leading the break, she dribbled behind her back as she crossed half court before slowing for a beat. The point guard looked left and whipped a pass the opposite direction to a trailing Liatu King (team-high 17 points and 10 rebounds). Miles had turned back toward the defensive end before King (Bishop McNamara High) had even finished the layup.
On the next possession, Miles rose up to bury a three from the right wing before backpedaling on defense and flapping both arms like an inflatable tube man outside a car dealership. But that was as good as it got for the Fighting Irish — TCU picked up its defense and responded with a 21-6 stretch that spanned the third and fourth quarters and ended with one of Van Lith’s threes.
“No offense to them, but it was really nothing they did to alter us,” Miles said. “Obviously, Sedona is in there, she was blocking shots, that’s one factor, but we literally were just missing shots that we normally make, and that’s going to happen at times.”
