Dec. 1, 2016
By Leigh Torbin
The Notre Dame women’s basketball team is ranked No. 1 and, for the fourth consecutive season, has gotten off to a 7-0 start. Not surprisingly, two of its finest — Lindsay Allen and Brianna Turner — were named on Thursday to the watch list for the Wade Trophy, presented annually by the WBCA to the top women’s collegiate player in the country.
Twice a finalist for the Nancy Lieberman Award for the nation’s top point guard, Allen has not missed a beat her senior season, ranking third nationally with 54 assists and fifth in the country with 7.7 per game. Her 4.15 assist-to-turnover ratio stands 12th in the nation. The 35th member of Notre Dame’s 1,000-career point club, joining the ranks during a Nov. 17 win over Green Bay, Allen is also 33rd nationally in steals after matching her career high with five in Wednesday night’s ACC/Big Ten Challenge victory on the road at Iowa.
Turner also joined the 1,000-career point club, hitting the plateau last night at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. She is the lone Notre Dame player to score in double figures for each of the team’s seven games in 2016-17 and currently possesses a run of 25 consecutive double-figure games. She has done this while facing some tough interior defenses, making the most of her offensive opportunities to stand 44th nationally in field goal percentage at 57.4%. Among her highlight games of the young campaign was a double-double performance in Notre Dame’s win over No. 17 Washington in the championship game of the Preseason WNIT.
Both are vying to be the first Irish recipient of the award which enters its 40th year.
Notre Dame will be back in action at 1 p.m. on Sunday when it plays host to Valparaiso at Purcell Pavilion at the Joyce Center. Another one of the program’s legends, Niele Ivey, will be inducted into the Ring of Honor during a pregame ceremony. Ivey will become the third female enshrined, joining Ruth Riley and Skylar Diggins. Beth (Morgan) Cunningham will become the fourth to join this elite grouping on Jan. 29 when the Irish play host to Virginia.
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Leigh Torbin, athletics communications associate director at the University of Notre Dame, has been part of the Fighting Irish athletics communications team since 2013 and coordinates all media efforts for Notre Dame’s women’s basketball and men’s golf teams. A native of Framingham, Massachusetts, Torbin graduated from the University of Massachusetts in 1998 with a bachelor’s degree in sports management. He has previously worked full-time on the athletic communications staffs at Vanderbilt, Florida, Connecticut and UCF.