Hokies Fall at the Hands of the Irish

Jay Winters

December 18, 2020

SOUTH BEND, Ind. - In what was truly a game of runs, Notre Dame handed Virginia Tech its first loss of the season 78-84 in Purcell Pavilion.

Gutsy performances from Elizabeth Kitley, who had 25 points and 8 rebounds, and Georgia Amoore, who had a season high 23 points, wasn’t enough to overcome a plethora of turnovers and fouls that ultimately cost the Hokies.

“They’re a hard guard, I don’t know how many people are going to be able to guard them one on one, but we need more than that,” Virginia Tech head coach Kenny Brooks said about Kitley and Amoore. “Aisha Sheppard didn’t give us a whole lot of production, Cayla didn’t score a point, and Asiah Jones only had 4. If we only have two kids contributing, it's going to be a long night for us.”

While Tech held former Hokie and one of Notre Dame’s top scorers in Dara Mabrey to only six points, freshman Maddy Westbeld and sophomore Sam Burnelle came up huge for the Irish.

Westbeld led Notre Dame with 23 points, while Burnelle had 17 off the bench and was 5-9 from beyond the arc, hitting a number of momentum swinging threes that put the Irish ahead.

“Their post players are very unorthodox because they are the ones who shoot the three,” Brooks said. “Our kids aren't necessarily adapt to chasing people off the three point line.”

The first quarter saw the Hokies pull ahead with their biggest lead of the game at 26-17, and Tech ended the quarter on an 18-4 run.

The Irish put on a run of their own and outscored the Hokies 26-12 in the second quarter, which included a 20-5 run. Notre Dame headed into halftime with a 43-38 lead.

Tech battled back from as much as seven points down in the third to take a four-point lead halfway through, but an Anaya Peoples three-pointer with a second left saw the Irish take a 62-63 lead heading into the fourth quarter.

The Hokies, in almost the same position that they faced last Thursday against Pittsburgh, tried to respond in a similar way and took a quick six-point lead after Kitley free throws and back to back Amoore threes.

It wasn’t long after, however, that Notre Dame responded with a 9-0 run to take a 70-73 lead with three minutes to play.

Tech answered with a mini 5-0 run to take a two- point lead with two and a half to play, but a series of layups from Westbeld and Peoples, along with costly turnovers from Kitley and Daja Green, pushed the Irish lead to four with just around 30 seconds to play.

“I really don’t think we deserved to win it the way we played down the stretch,” Brooks said. “We made some critical errors that we couldn’t recover from, we didn’t execute when we had to, and as a result we never were able to get any separation.”

Cayla King had a three-point opportunity to cut the Irish’s lead to one with around 25 seconds to play, but couldn’t get it to fall.

The Hokies fall to 6-1 on the year while the Irish move to 3-3.

Virginia Tech faces rival Virginia (0-5) this Sunday at 12:00 p.m. in Cassell Coliseum before embarking on a two-week break for Christmas.