Lindsay Allen steps up her game for Notre Dame

Lindsay Allen may never live up to the expectations of others.

She doesn’t have to, of course. Being Lindsay Allen has been good enough thus far for the Notre Dame women’s basketball team that goes for its 20th victory of the season Thursday night at Blacksburg, Va., against Atlantic Coast Conference foe Virginia Tech.

If asked to name the point guard with the best record in her first 59 games in an Irish uniform, most would answer All-American Skylar Diggins, the former Indiana Miss Basketball at South Bend Washington who played in three Women’s Final Fours for head coach Muffet McGraw.

Wrong answer. It’s Allen, a 5-foot-7 sophomore from Mitchellville, Md., who is 56-3 with a Women’s Final Four appearance already, something Diggins, who was 49-10 in her first 59 games at Notre Dame, didn’t accomplish until her sophomore season.

The fact that Allen went 37-0 in her first 37 games as Notre Dame’s point guard is still hard to comprehend. The 38th game, of course, was Notre Dame’s 79-58 setback in the NCAA Championship Game to Connecticut. A 37-1 record is nothing to sneeze at nor was the play of Allen, who averaged 6.2 points, 2.4 rebounds and 3.9 assists while shooting 49.7 percent from the floor, including 35.7 from beyond the 3-point line, and 81.5 percent from the free-throw line.

McGraw and assistant Niele Ivey, whose fiery demeanor as the point guard helped Notre Dame to the 2001 NCAA title, wanted much, much more – more shots, more leadership.

“Lindsay came back this season with a different mindset, looking to score more,” McGraw said. “She’s been more aggressive offensively.”

“We asked (Lindsay) to be more vocal and to take more shots,” said Ivey, who realizes that not everyone can be Diggins, it did it all on the floor and the locker room for the Irish, nor can everyone be like Ivey was for McGraw. “I was super vocal. You had to shut me up.”

The good thing about Allen is she understands what her coaches and teammates need from her and she’s now got the confidence to give it to them.

“It’s really not my nature to be that type of player,” the quiet Allen said. “I think you have to be that type of person – loud, bossy and outgoing. I think I have to develop that at times. But whatever this team needs I’m willing to do, and at times I realize you have to get in someone’s face, to let them know what they have to do.”

Everyone – McGraw, Ivey, Allen and even her teammates – can see it, especially when Notre Dame gathers in the huddle at the bench or huddles before a free throw. Allen quietly gets her point across.

Mostly, though, the improvement can be seen by the numbers Allen has produced this season. In helping Notre Dame to a 19-2 start, Allen has become the team’s third-best scoring option behind junior All-American Jewell Loyd (21.6 points per game) and freshman phenom Brianna Turner (15.7), averaging 10.4 points on 56.8-percent shooting from the field (including 42.3 from behind the 3-point line) and 87.5-percent shooting from the charity stripe. Allen’s rebound and assist totals have improved as well, to 3.6 and 5.0 a game, respectively.

“My scoring has gone up, my assists have gone up, my rebounding has gone up,” Allen said. “I think there have been definitely been games where I could have been a little more aggressive looking for my shot. But that’s because some of my teammates have been wide open and they’ve had better shots than me. It just depends on the game whether I get 15 or 20 or I just get 10 or 12.”

When Allen has been needed, she has mostly delivered. When Loyd, Turner, Taya Reimer and Kathryn Westbeld encountered foul problems in the second game of the season, Allen responded with 14 points, nine rebounds and five assists in a 71-63 victory at Michigan State. Then when UCLA decided to stop Loyd, Allen stepped up with a then career-high 22 points with four assists in an 82-67 win in Los Angeles. She then followed that effort with 18 points and a then career-high eight assists in a 74-68 victory over Florida State.

Her best two games, though, may have come in back-to-back victories over North Carolina (89-79) and Tennessee (88-77). At Chapel Hill, Allen delivered a career-high 24 points with four rebounds and a career-high nine assists. Then against the Vols on Jan. 19 in South Bend, in perhaps her best game, Allen had 15 points, five rebounds, six assists and three steals. She made the big free throws down the stretch that kept Notre Dame in the lead.

“I think she’s developed into the type of point guard who can give us whatever we need,” Ivey said.

McGraw, who was never content as a player, expects even more. For instance, Allen has scored in double figures in just 11 of Notre Dame’s 21 games. That needs to go up, according to McGraw, if Notre Dame, the defending ACC regular-season and tournament champion, is to go deep into the postseason.

“I think there have been games where she didn’t look to score enough,” McGraw said. “After you’ve established yourself as one of the top three scorers, we need to rely on that. She also needs to be better with the basketball. I thought Clemson, when she had seven assists and one turnover, is what she is more capable of.”

Winning, of course, takes care of a lot of things. And no point guard has done it better than Lindsay Allen.