Women’s college basketball needs players like Notre Dame guard Olivia Miles
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SOUTH BEND – Happiness for Notre Dame women’s basketball junior point guard Olivia Miles has long been a 94-foot stretch of hardwood where she can be her.
Put her at midcourt with a basketball and options on either side and let her flow. She might offer a hesitation dribble here or an around the back dribble there. She might fake a pass left, then look right. She might keep it herself and pull up for another mid-range jumper or race all the way to the rim and finish with such a flourish that everyone around wonders how she did that.
The basketball court has long been home for the 5-foot-10 Miles. Her sanctuary. Her place of peace when she wanted it. Needed it.
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That’s why it was hard last week to watch Miles watch her teammates do defensive drills at one end of Purcell Pavilion. She stood alone at center court with a blue zip-up hoodie on, hands clasped behind her back, watching and likely dreaming of the day when she again can practice, again can be all in with the game she loves.
Instead, Miles and basketball are just friends.
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When they again might get serious, no one can say. Or will say. It’s likely not going to follow the quicken-the-pulse timeline Miles floated last week. She said that her best-case scenario is playing the season opener against powerhouse South Carolina in Paris.
That’s next month. That’s not going to happen.
Miles doing more than shopping in Paris barely eight months removed from suffering a significant right knee injury — more on that in a minute — is akin to Notre Dame football playing for a national championship this season or Notre Dame men’s basketball getting to the 2024 Final Four.
Best case? Sure. Realistic case? No. Minutes before offering the season opener as a return date, Miles tiptoed into her timeline as gingerly as she still walks/jogs/jumps with that right leg. She sometimes looks as if she’s dragging it along. Let’s go already.
“The goal is to play this season, but I’m not going to rush it,” Miles said. “I have years in this game that I want to produce and be able to do it healthy, so hopefully, I’m going to take my time.”
Reading between those lines — and there’s been much of that since Miles crumpled along the baseline of KFC Yum! Center late in the first half of the 2022-23 season finale against Louisville last March — you get the sense that Miles hopes to play this season.
Maybe.
She might be healthy enough to try by January or February. Maybe she’s cleared to practice sooner than later, but looks only a shadow of her former confident, attacking, free-wheeling self. There’s hesitation. There’s self-doubt. Head coach Niele Ivey might meet with Miles and the medical staff down the road and decide its best to play the long game through a long season.
Might Miles sit until 2024-25? Maybe.
“It’s more of an individual healing…
Read More: Women’s college basketball needs players like Notre Dame guard Olivia Miles 2023-10-14 08:05:55