By R.L. Bynum

CHAPEL HILL — It was always going to take a near-perfect game for No. 17 North Carolina to pull an upset against a loaded Notre Dame team.

From the dazzling moves and menacing defense of sophomore guard sensation Hannah Hidalgo to the step-back and off-dribble 3-pointers from fifth-year guard Olivia Miles and the talent up and down No. 3 Notre Dame’s roster, UNC’s defense — its driving force season — didn’t have enough answers.

Hidalgo collected 24 points, five 3-pointers, five assists and three steals as the Irish took control with a 16–4 second-quarter run and won 76–66 at Carmichael Arena on Sunday, becoming the second team to score at least 70 on UNC.

“We played a great college basketball game today,” said UNC coach Courtney Banghart, whose team trailed for the final 33½ minutes. “Great team that we played against, and they had to play great to beat us. And that’s our goal.”

Banghart said this was a benchmark game for UNC (13–3, 1–2 ACC), and she has seen improvement since the 69–58 loss to UConn in November.

“We were better than we were against UConn, and we’ll be better the next time we have an opportunity like this, as long as we just keep committing to the process,” said Banghart, whose team hosts No. 14 Duke (12–3, 3–0) at 7 p.m. Thursday (ACCN).

UNC’s defense forced 21 Notre Dame turnovers (the second-most the Irish have committed this season behind 22 against Utah) but couldn’t overcome the best 3-point shooting team in the country.

“It’s a hard team to guard,” Banghart said. “I think if you had shown me that they were going to have to hit 13 3s out of 21 attempts to beat you, I would have thought they would hammer us. It’s a good defensive team playing a good offensive team. And they got this one today.”

The Irish (12–2, 3–0) shot 61.9% from outside the arc, with Miles scoring 19 points and five 3-pointers. After a rough perimeter shooting day in UNC’s previous game at Miami (6 of 29), the Heels’ struggles behind the arc continued.

Guard Lexi Donarski scored 13 points and three 3-pointers but the rest of the team was 3 of 17 from outside the arc.

“They’re not just dribbling it down and shooting it,” Banghart said of how the Irish got their 3-pointers. “They get their 3s because of how you have to handle the ball screens. And if you don’t handle the ball screen, then you give up layups.”

With the officials overlooking much of Notre Dame’s physical play, the Irish were called for only nine fouls, and the teams combined for only 17 free-throw attempts.

“A lot of inconsistencies that were hard to manage,” said Banghart, vaguely referring to the officiating while not saying it. “I thought our guys played through that really well.”

Maria Gakdeng scored 16 points and was effective inside for UNC when she got the ball, but the Irish did a good job of denying her the ball by throwing bodies at her.

“Very physical down low,” Gakdeng said. “They were fouling, I think, a little bit, but the refs kind of missed those calls.

“But definitely, when I got the catches, I was able to finish knowing that I’m a pretty efficient player,” Gakdeng said. “So, just going straight up and knowing that they were going to double me as well, I’m going in. So being patient with the ball, knowing that the double’s coming in, knowing where to pass the ball when I get it.”

The trend of teams being very physical against Gakdeng continues, and she was a focal point of Notre Dame’s defense.

“We’re working on bringing some help from the opposite post and bringing some help from the wing,” Notre Dame coach Niele Ivey said on her strategy to stop Gakdeng. “We really worked on ball pressure.”

Apart from the 11 rebounds from Alyssa Ustby (her 43rd career double-double and sixth of the season with 12 points) and nine from Gakdeng, UNC only pulled down eight other rebounds. The Heels lost the rebounding battle 40–28 while rebounding only 18.4% of their misses.

“You could say that Maria and Alyssa are stealing the rebounds, or you could say that they’re having to do all of it,” Banghart said. “We need our perimeter players to be better rebounders. We need them to pursue better; we need them to prioritize it. We can promise you we work on it. That shift has to happen for us to take another step forward.”

Ustby wasn’t interested in a moral victory but said that UNC showed that it can play with the best teams in the country, and coming up short is frustrating. She lamented that a few more boxouts or other big plays could have made the difference.

“We just have to take a step back and realize that we did play a solid game,” she said. “Obviously, it wasn’t enough to win, but we know that any team that’s coming in here, or places that we go next, we can compete with anybody; we can beat anybody.”

The teams traded early runs with UNC scoring the first four points, followed by Notre Dame going up by five with nine consecutive points. UNC responded with eight in a row behind two Donarski 3-pointers to go up by three.

Carolina managed only two Gakdeng buckets during the rest of the opening quarter as the Irish went on an 11–4 run to lead 20–16 after one period.

Two Hidalgo 3-pointers, the second turning into a four-point play, sparked a 16–4 Irish run to go up 14 with 4:15 left in the first half. UNC scored six straight points, but the Irish finished the first half with a 6–0 run to lead 42–28 at halftime.

“That second quarter wasn’t our best,” Banghart said. “We didn’t stay connected in certain areas, particularly on the offensive end.”

Carolina scored the first seven points of the second half to trim the deficit to seven on a Reniya Kelly 3-pointer. Donarski’s steal and layup capped an 11–2 run to pull UNC within five, but the Heels never got closer after that.

“Our guards were able to leak out a little bit so we could put a little more pressure on their defense, and we kind of forced them to scramble,” Ustby said of UNC’s early second-half flurry. “That led to some wide-open shots. When you have a night where you’re not shooting great from the 3-point line we want to make those shots as open and in the flow of the offense as possible. So that gave us a lot of really great looks.”

A Miles 3-pointer bumped Notre Dame’s lead to 12 with 1:18 left, and the Irish led 61–52 after three quarters.

After a Liza Karlen 3-pointer expanded the Irish lead to 14, consecutive 3s from Donarski and Lanie Grant sliced it to eight. An 8–0 Notre Dame run pushed it back to 14 and UNC never got closer than 10 after that.

NOTES — Duke comes into Thursday’s game after rolling to a 69–31 home win Sunday over Pittsburgh. … Notre Dame was the fourth currently ranked team UNC has met after earlier matchups with No. 7 UConn, No. 13 Georgia Tech and No. 16 Kentucky, with the only win coming against the Wildcats. … Senior Maddy Westbeld made her season debut for Notre Dame after recovering from a foot injury. … Georgia Tech is the only other UNC opponent to top 70 points. … Notre Dame snapped a three-game losing streak in the series, evened its record in Carmichael to 3–3 and leads the series 11–5. … Freshman guard Lanie Grant, who had six points and two assists, wasn’t feeling well and was on an IV earlier on Sunday.

No. 3 Notre Dame 76, No. 17 UNC 66

Team	League	Overall	NET*
No. 16 Louisville	2–0	12–3	14
N.C. State	2–0	8–4	28
Syracuse	1–0	11–1	41
Stanford	1–0	10–2	33
No. 20 Notre Dame	1–0	8–2	19
Virginia	1–0	9–3	30
Duke	1–0	6–6	32
Wake Forest	1–1	10–3	122
Virginia Tech	1–1	9–3	53
Clemson	1–1	8–4	47
Miami	1–1	7–4	48
No. 18 North Carolina	0–1	10–3	16
California	0–1	8–4	69
Pittsburgh	0–1	7–6	2270
SMU	0–1	6–6	155
Boston College	0–1	4–10	207
Florida State	0–2	5–9	127
Georgia Tech	0–2	4–9	128

* — Through Thursday games
Thursday’s results
Virginia Tech 79, Florida State 54
Miami 64, Wake Forest 61
Pittsburgh 98, Saint Francis 46
N.C. State 87, Georgia Tech 58
Duke 97, South Dakota State 54
Friday’s games
Syracuse 106, Mercyhurst 40
Northeastern 73, Boston College 67
SMU 73, Sam Houston 69
Stanford 67, No. 22 Washington 62
Saturday’s games
No. 16 Louisville 89, No. 17 Tennessee 65
Virginia 88, Winthrop 53
Florida State 77, South Carolina State 36
Duke 76, Belmont 46
Sunday’s games
Charleston Southern at No. 18 North Carolina, noon, ACC Network
Radford at Virginia Tech, noon, ACCN Extra
Kennesaw State at Miami, noon, ACCN Extra
N.C. State at Davidson, noon, CBS Sports Network
Pittsburgh at Duquesne, 1 p.m., ESPN+
North Florida at Clemson, 2 p.m., ACCN Extra
Bellarmine at No. 20 Notre Dame, 5 p.m., ACCN Extra
Southern at SMU, 5 p.m., ACCN Extra
Oregon vs. Stanford in San Francisco, 6 p.m., ESPN
No. 19 USC vs. California in San Francisco, 8:30, ESPN
Monday’s game
Gardner-Webb at Wake Forest, 1 p.m., ACCN Extra

Date	Day/month	Time	Opponent/event (current ranks)	TV/ record
	October
30	Thursday	L, 91–82	No. 3 South Carolina in Atlanta	Exhib.
	November
3	Monday	W, 90–42	vs. N.C. Central	1–0
6	Thursday	W, 71–37	vs. Elon	2–0
			WBCA Challenge Las Vegas
13	Thursday	L, 78–60	vs. No. 4 UCLA	2–1
15	Saturday	W, 82–68	vs. Fairfield	3–1
			———————————
20	Thursday	W, 85–50	at N.C. A&T	4–1
23	Sunday	W, 94–48	vs. UNCG	5–1
			Cancun Challenge Cancun, Mexico
27	Thursday	W, 83–48	vs. South Dakota St.	6–1
28	Friday	W, 85–73	vs. Kansas State	7–1
29	Saturday	W, 80–63	vs. Columbia	8–1
	December		ACC/SEC Women’s Challenge
4	Thursday	W, 79–64	at No. 2 Texas	8–2
			———————————
7	Sunday	W, 82–40	vs. Boston Univ.	9–2
14	Sunday	L, 76–66, OT	vs. No. 16 Louisville	9–3, 0–1 ACC
17	Wednesday	W, 84–34	vs. UNCW	10–3
21	Sunday	Noon	vs. Charleston Southern	ACCN Extra
29	Monday	8 p.m.	at Boston College	ACCN
	January
1	Thursday	Noon	vs. California	ACCN
4	Sunday	1 p.m.	vs. Stanford	ESPN
11	Sunday	1 p.m.	at No. 20 Notre Dame	ESPN
15	Thursday	7 p.m.	vs. Miami	ACCN Extra
18	Sunday	2 p.m.	at Florida State	The CW
22	Thursday	8 p.m.	at Georgia Tech	ACCN
25	Sunday	2 p.m.	vs. Syracuse	The CW
	February
2	Monday	6 p.m.	at N.C. State	ESPN2
5	Thursday	7 p.m.	vs. Clemson	ACCN
8	Sunday	2 p.m.	vs. Wake Forest	ACCN
12	Thursday	6 p.m.	vs. SMU	ACCN
15	Sunday	1 p.m.	at Duke	ABC
19	Thursday	6 p.m.	at Virginia Tech	ACCN
22	Sunday	Noon	vs. Pittsburgh	ACCN
26	Thursday	7 p.m.	at Virginia	ACCN Extra
	March
1	Sunday	Noon	vs. Duke	ESPN
			ACC tournament
4–8	Wed.-Sun		Gas South Arena, Duluth, Ga.
			NCAA tournament
20–24	Fri.-Mon.		First, second rounds
27–30	Fri.-Mon.		Regionals Fort Worth, Texas, and Sacramento, Calif.
	April
3, 5	Fri., Sun		Final Four Phoenix