Four New Players Join Notre Dame Women's Basketball Roster

Notre Dame women's basketball welcomes incoming transfers Becky Obinma and Anna DeWolfe and freshmen Hannah Hidalgo and Emma Risch this summer

The Notre Dame women’s basketball team arrived back on campus this week to begin its offseason workouts. Niele Ivey’s fourth Fighting Irish team returns the majority of the roster from this past season’s NCAA Sweet 16 squad, but there will be a handful of key additions for the upcoming season.

Notre Dame is one of just five Division One teams in the nation that did not lose a player to the transfer portal this offseason, but they were able to add guard Anna DeWolfe and forward Becky Obinma to join incoming freshmen Hannah Hidalgo and Emma Risch on the 2023-24 roster.

DeWolfe comes to Notre Dame after four years at Fordham, where she earned First Team All-Atlantic 10 honors in her last three seasons. She also played against Notre Dame twice in her career. Her leadership stood out to Ivey.

“I was always just really, really impressed,” Ivey told Irish Breakdown of the experience playing against DeWolfe. “She's a high level scorer, high level guard, extremely high IQ, her toughness. And again, her leadership I think her coming in as a fifth year. She has a chip on her shoulder. And I think she's really going to do a great job of leading us in so many different categories but, culture wise, I think she's going to be a perfect fit for us.”

DeWolfe gives Notre Dame another legit 3-point threat on the court as well. She hit 238 of 707 shots (33.7%) in her four seasons at Fordham. She will pair well with rising junior Sonia Citron, who made 48 of 120 (40%) of her 3-point shots last season but was Notre Dame’s lone 3-point threat after Dara Mabrey’s career ended in January due to leg injuries.

“I have two great 3-point shooters coming in and Anna's going to do a great job with stretching to the 3-point line,” Ivey remarked.

The other incoming 3-point threat is Risch. The 5-star guard from Melbourne, Fla was rated as the No. 8 overall player in the incoming freshman class by ESPN. The 6-1 guard reminds Ivey of a teammate from her 2001 national championship team.

“I honestly compare Emma to Alicia Ratay as far as her shooting,” Ivey boasted. “She is a pure, pure shooter. I don't think I've seen a shooter with her caliber, from my opinion in recruiting her, since Alicia. So I'm interested to see how she's going to do with those 3-point records because I think she's the type of person that could potentially break those.

“She's got a beautiful, beautiful shot and she's like you said big guard,” Ivey continued. “And she reads defenses really well. And you guys are going to be really impressed by her 3-point range.”

Ratay ended her four-year Irish career in 2003 after making an NCAA record 262 of 550 shots from behind the 3-point line for a 47% clip. She connected on 160 of 318 long range shots for a staggering school record 50% clip during the 2001 national championship campaign.

The other incoming freshman is the highly touted Hidalgo, who is the New Jersey Gatorade Player of the Year and earned MVP honors at the McDonald’s All-American game this spring. She also will compete for the USA U19 team in Madrid in July.

“She's a superstar,” Ivey said of the incoming 5-6 point guard. “She's a superstar and I'm so proud of her. She's accomplished so much, like you just mentioned, but she's just an ultimately amazing young woman. She's a great kid, and she's going to come in and hit the ground running right away. She's just really, she's blossoming. You know, this past season this past year I feel like she's really grown with her confidence and just her game. And I think she's going to again, be somebody that's going to her game is going to translate very, very smoothly here at Notre Dame.”

Hidalgo’s arrival also gives the Fighting Irish another true point guard after Olivia Miles’ season ended with a knee injury late in the second half in the Feb. 26 regular season finale at Louisville. Notre Dame played all five of its postseason games without Miles and with shooting guards Citron and KK Bransford running the point.

Ivey remains hopeful that Miles can open the season with the Irish when they face South Carolina in Paris on Nov. 6, but there is much more depth at the point now than a year ago. 

“That was important to me to have another ball handler, another point guard,” Ivey said. “I always recruit point guards every two years. But also, I'll go back to Anna DeWolfe, she can also help as well. She's a really good ball handler. She can play multiple positions. I think she'll help as well. But yeah, Hannah's just the ultimate high IQ point guard. (A) pass first point guard but also somebody that can defend and she's going to bring the energy. It's contagious.”

Notre Dame also needed to address the front court after the departure of Lauren Ebo, who was the team’s second-leading rebounder with 7.0 per game in her lone season in an Irish uniform.

Obinma started her career at TCU before finishing her career at Pepperdine, where she played against Cal State Fullerton – a team current Irish assistant coach Charel Allen worked fore before joining Ivey’s staff this past season.

“Charel was very familiar with her and spoke really highly of her just competing against her in their league,” Ivey explained. “And Becky is just again, she's a great athlete. She was a track star before she kind of started playing basketball.”

Obinma averaged 6.5 points and 6.5 rebounds and blocked 23 shots last season for the Waves after averaging 7.5 and 6.3 with 40 blocked shots two years ago.

“She has a lot of experience,” Ivey continued of Obinma. “She's a back to the basket post. She'll give us that that post presence. A little bit different from Ebo. But she definitely gives us that post presence that graduated so I'm excited to see her. She's a great rim runner. Like she's really fast and athletic kind of plays above the rim even with her size. So I'm interested to see how that translates with us. She's another one that chip on her shoulder, is eager and hungry like Anna so I'm excited for both of them.”

The addition of the four incoming players gives Ivey 12 scholarship players on the roster for the upcoming 2023-24 roster. It marks a sizable increase from the nine scholarship players on the roster a year ago. That roster ultimately expanded to 10 when Cassandre Prosper joined the team in December, but the season finished with nine available players due to season ending injuries suffered by Miles and Dara Mabrey.

“I think 12 is my ideal number,” Ivey said of the roster size. “You know, just since the landscape of (the) transfer portal and you know, being the coach (for three years) this year, I think I got that really comfortable number at 12. I mean, I held I think 10 to 11 couple years and 12 is ideal. Every year changes. I think this is a great number to work with.”

The 2021-22 team had 10 scholarship players on the roster, although it essentially was nine because Kaitlyn Gilbert didn’t play most of the season due to personal reasons and transferred when the season was over. 

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