NCAAW
Graham Hays, ESPN.com 9y

Allen steps up as next great Irish PG

Women's College Basketball, Notre Dame Fighting Irish, Baylor Lady Bears

OKLAHOMA CITY -- A point guard who spoke loudly and backed up every word of it got this started. A point guard who lets her play speak for her kept it going. All the way to Tampa.

Skylar Diggins, meet Lindsay Allen.

Not so long ago, Notre Dame was a respected program in college basketball. It mattered. It was healthy and reliable. But it wasn't a program that influenced seasons. Had it been a country, it would have been Sweden. Maybe Australia.

It was pleasant. A superpower it was not. Influence comes and goes, with lasting power hard to come by, and the reach of the national championship won in 2001 had started to wane. Then came Diggins, the homegrown hero who memorably chose Notre Dame ahead of Final Four-regular Stanford. By the time she was a sophomore, the Fighting Irish were back in the Final Four. Then they went back the next year. And the year after that. Diggins left but they went back a fourth time, players who were attracted by Diggins, either directly or in the results that followed her, taking the reins.

One of the people it attracted was Allen, the opposite of her predecessor in seemingly every way.

Where Diggins was brash, Allen is taciturn. Diggins had the social media following of a Hollywood star. Allen's @LA_Cruisen handle is more typical of a college student. Diggins went to South Bend's Washington High School and stayed home. Allen left her hometown of Washington to make the trip to the northern reaches of Indiana.

But five seasons ago, Diggins produced a huge game in a regional final to beat Tennessee. And Sunday night in Chesapeake Energy Arena, Allen matched that effort nearly point for point -- and in other ways improved on it.

"I thought Lindsay Allen was just the best point guard in the country today," Notre Dame coach Muffet McGraw said.

When have we heard that before?

When Notre Dame needed someone to step up, Allen responded with 23 points, seven assists, five rebounds and no turnovers in 40 minutes. The result was that top-seeded Notre Dame beat second-seeded Baylor 77-68 and advanced to the Final Four for the fifth season in a row, a feat only three other programs ever accomplished.

"I don't think Lindsay gets as much credit as she deserves," Notre Dame guard Michaela Mabrey said. "Without her, we wouldn't be in this position at all. She runs our team completely, and I wouldn't want to play for any other point guard in the country. She is absolutely amazing, and I am so glad that she has just killed this entire tournament."

There are no fifth-year seniors on the roster, so there is no one who experienced all five regional finals as a player. But in addition to Natalie Achonwa, now a part of the basketball staff and on the bench Sunday, Kayla McBride made her way into the locker room after the win. She said she knew as early as the European trip the team took the summer prior to Allen's freshman season that the newcomer was up to the challenge as the replacement for Diggins. That confidence never wavered en route to a perfect regular season and the title game a season ago. But that player who deferred and distributed as a freshman, who scored just 235 points that season, grew into the one who scored 51 points in one weekend.

"I think L.A. has always had that in her," McBride said. "I think she had leaders around her, but I think she's starting to feel like she has to do that now. She has that killer instinct. I really like it. I told her that, 'L.A., you've got to play like that all the time.' She's very even-keeled, there's no highs and lows, but when she needs to turn it on, she does.

"I think it just comes with confidence and experience. We played in the national championship game last year, and now here she is. She knows what it takes to get here."

What it took to get back was a second consecutive virtuoso scoring performance, on the heels of a season-best 24 points in the Sweet 16, from a player in Allen more known for her assists and assist-to-turnover ratio. Baylor was the quicker team out of the gates Sunday night, in no small part because its point guard Niya Johnson continued to play like the best floor general in the country -- as well as one of its best defenders. Baylor recorded 13 assists on 17 first-half field goals, five of those assists from Johnson, who at that point had 21 assists and zero turnovers in 60 minutes of the Oklahoma City Regional.

Not content with that, she also took regular turns defending All-American Jewell Loyd on the other end. Baylor associate coach Bill Brock earlier in the weekend called Johnson one of the team's best off-ball defenders, someone the coaches had to be judicious using as a stopper because of all of her other responsibilities, but whom they loved to use in that role.

Even on something as simple as a pass to the wing to initiate a half-court set, Johnson's pressure at one point in the first half forced the Notre Dame player to break too hard for a pass. Unable to stop in time, Loyd bobbled and lost the ball. Back Baylor went the other way in transition. Loyd can be stopped, but rarely does she appear flummoxed.

Notre Dame never stopped looking to Loyd, but whether because of the defensive attention from the field or whatever caused her to struggle from the free throw line, it just wasn't her night.

What was available was what Allen seized. She hit 7-of-9 shots in the second half, a mix of pull-up jumpers and drives into the lane in which she demonstrated an uncanny ability to keep calm amidst bigger bodies and maneuver for a clean look.

"How they were guarding the ball screens suited Lindsay coming off and shooting her pull-up or coming off the ball screen and looking to drive," Notre Dame associate head coach Carol Owens said. "And then when some of their players got into a little bit of foul trouble, she was able to get to the basket because they didn't want to foul. They had to worry about not only [Brianna Turner] rolling to the basket, but you've got to worry about Lindsay driving, as well. Somebody who can drive and shoot, you've got to pick your poison."

A year ago, a lot of opponents would have gladly picked Allen as their poison of choice. It wouldn't have been a knock on her ability, just an acknowledgement of who Achonwa, Loyd and McBride were. But Allen's importance to this Final Four excursion far predates the points she scored this weekend against Stanford and Baylor. As much as replacing Diggins, by position at least, was a challenge for the Fighting Irish, replacing Achonwa, McBride and Ariel Braker this season was a challenge of personality. Without those three, especially Achonwa, Notre Dame didn't have a clear voice of command for the first time during its run. A few weeks before the season, McGraw admitted she still didn't know who that would be.

One weekend isn't going to change the fact that if one person has to be singled out, this is Loyd's team. But it's a false choice because it doesn't need to rest on one set of shoulders. Remember, Mabrey said there is no point guard in the country she would rather play for. She didn't say play with; she said play for.

People looking on from afar might mistake quiet for uncertainty. But it isn't a mistake most would make twice.

"I think as you get to know me more and as you see me play a little bit more," Allen said, "you know that I'm really just more non-verbal signals out there and just different signals given to my teammates.

"I think as I've gotten more comfortable throughout the year with my teammates, I think I've gotten more comfortable talking. Last year when I first came in I wasn't really comfortable because I was just a freshman and [the team leaders] were seniors, just that distance between classes."

Any game is the sum of more than one part. As good as Allen was in the second half, Notre Dame should forever celebrate the shooting display Mabrey put on in the first half, especially given the circumstances. Under the weather, by her description taking fluids before the game, Mabrey didn't play in the second half because of dizziness. But she got her money's worth in the first half, putting physical woes aside to score 14 points and hit four 3-pointers. When Baylor looked like it might extend its early lead into comfortable territory, Mabrey kept pulling things back. Without Mabrey in the second half, Madison Cable came up big, hitting a key 3-pointer and making an even more key block to snuff out a Baylor break.

But one player can define a game, can even define a whole weekend. Allen played like a superpower point guard.

McBride, who went to Final Fours with both Allen and Diggins, sat in a locker and soaked up the scene.

It was a familiar one.

"They're both very, very competitive," McBride said. "Sky's a little different, she feeds off the energy of the crowd, she wants everybody to be involved. But L.A., it's like it's right here, it's in her heart. She knows when to attack the rim, she knows when to get the ball. They're very similar with how they play. They can both score, they can dish the rock, they love transition. They've very similar. &3133; But they're also very different."

Sunday night and all weekend in Oklahoma City, Allen stood on her own.

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