Olivia Miles returned from a knee injury. He is set to return to Notre Dame’s star backcourt

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) – There were many days when Olivia Miles felt pangs of frustration construct together with the pain and soreness, and it was all a part of the Notre Dame All-American point guard’s efforts to rehabilitate on the way in which back from a serious knee injury.

Sometimes it got here throughout the exercises she hated most: lying on the bottom, wrapping an elastic band round her foot and pulling it over her shoulder, which forced her surgically repaired right knee to bend further than vital.

“Just a lot of discomfort,” Miles said. “It’s also hard because you know you’re not playing.”

These moments are actually small steps on the way in which back to this moment. On the verge of payday. Weeks after returning to college basketball for the primary time since February 2023. Now set to play with Hannah Hidalgo, freshman who became a star in her absence and create a backcourt powerful enough to make the Fighting Irish a strong contender to advance to the game’s final weekend.

The road there’ll include making it through a tough ACC race that features an NC State team that reached last 12 months’s Final Four, the addition of Pac-12 perennial power Stanford, and a slew of teams that made it to last 12 months’s NCAA Tournament, similar to Louisville , Virginia Tech, Duke and North Carolina.

The Irish need Miles. She’s ready.

“I just constantly worked on it: ‘This is happening for you, not to you — this is happening for your career, for the good of your body,’” Miles said Tuesday throughout the preseason “ACC Tipoff” basketball media day. “I feel like it helped me come back stronger, both physically and mentally, and just more confident.”

Miles is a leader on the ground at 6’1″ and has excellent pass vision, yet also works on the glass to create offense and has the helpful ability to take over games without giving up shot after shot.

Lifestyle

She became the primary freshman, either men’s or women’s, to record a triple-double within the 2022 NCAA Tournament and was putting the ending touches on a season that made her an Associated Press second-team All-American when she fell to the baseline. her right knee buckled while driving at Louisville within the 2023 regular season finale.

Miles, who was writhing on the ground and screaming in pain on that dreary Sunday, suffered a torn anterior cruciate ligament. She later returned to the bench to have fun the victory that clinched the ACC regular-season title – her right leg was wrapped in a bandage from thigh to ankle – but missed the postseason and ultimately your entire 2023-2024 season.

The weeks leading up to the season give her a likelihood to connect with Hidalgo, who is on his way to becoming one among the highest scorers within the country (22.6) first-team AP All-American and led the Irish to the ACC Tournament title while Miles could only watch from the sidelines. It was an all-star season for Hidalgo, who joined fellow freshman JuJu Watkins at USC, offering a pair of players with future potential in women’s college basketball at a time when Iowa megastar Caitlin Clark was wrapping up her college profession.

Coach Niele Ivey sees the 2 as “interchangeable defenders” who may also help one another: Miles will take the pressure off Hidalgo, Hidalgo will help Miles return to elite form.

“I think that’s the biggest question that everyone always asks is how it’s going to work out,” Hidalgo said of mixing their talents. “I think the pieces of the puzzle fit together perfectly. And I know Coach Ivey, she’s recruiting pieces of the puzzle. Not only does she recruit a whole bunch of different great players. We all fit together well.”

On the opposite hand, it’s a straightforward task compared to what Miles faced during her recovery.

It was a slow march, from barely having the ability to run in the beginning of pre-season training to light, non-contact 5-on-0 work before he was finally cleared to compete in February. Along the way in which, her rehabilitation to improve flexibility and strengthen her knee – leg raises, squats and leg presses, that damned band work – was a grueling march from checkpoint to milestone and checkpoint again in her recovery.

“This injury is like a wave,” Miles said. “I at all times compare it to this because in the future you will feel great and the subsequent day you will be sore and you possibly can’t move. … I’m trying to keep my balance. But yes, there are days after I are available and it feels so good that I say, “Yes, I’m back.” But there are also days when I feel, “Maybe I still need a little more work.”

The excellent news was that Ivey knew what to be careful for, considering she had torn all of her ACLs during her Fighting Irish profession. This also included those days when Ivey could just tell that Miles was a little down by the look on her face after a tough rehab workout.

“When you come back from an ACL injury, you have about two or three months off until you’re in the same place,” Ivey said. “You actually improve physically. But you do not know. …You still feel such as you’re stuck in the identical place. I do know she had a few moments like that.

Ultimately, Ivey said, it’s about Miles taking the time to rebuild trust in her knee and confidence that “everything is going to be OK.”

Miles feels like she already believes it.

“I mean, I feel better than ever,” she said.