SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- Almost a year to the day after it beat a highly ranked Maryland team despite playing most of that game without Brianna Turner, Notre Dame faced its biggest test of a new season against Ohio State while again without the services of its emerging All-American.
The difference this time was that Notre Dame also was without Taya Reimer -- who scored 21 points in the game a year ago against Maryland but sat out Wednesday's game with an Achilles injury -- and Jewell Loyd, who scored 27 points against the Terrapins but is now in the WNBA.
Yet somehow the result, a 75-72 win for the third-ranked Fighting Irish against the 10th-ranked Buckeyes, was the same as it ever was for this program that has now won 21 consecutive games decided by single digits or in overtime and advanced to five consecutive Final Fours.
The school that gave us the Four Horsemen won with, well, the Four Who Remained.
And with the exception of point guard Lindsay Allen, the names Madison Cable, Hannah Huffman and Kathryn Westbeld might be only slightly more recognizable these days than Jim Crowley, Elmer Layden, Don Miller and Harry Stuhlereher to those beyond this slice of the Midwest.
"We have to do everything as a team," Notre Dame coach Muffet McGraw said of her squad's current reality. "We have to team rebound. We have to play team defense. We have to share the ball on offense. Everybody playing together, that's how we're going to win."
If that's a little positive for your taste, there was also this:
"It's going to look ugly for a while," McGraw added of an offense retooled for four guards.
Notre Dame's season, at least as the national title contender it prides itself on remaining, hinges on a player who wasn't involved at all in the win against Ohio State. Injured during a Thanksgiving practice that came in a tournament in the Bahamas, sophomore Turner watched from the bench in street clothes, her right arm immobilized in a sling to protect her injured shoulder. McGraw said after the game that no final decision has been reached as to treatment, although a determination could come before Saturday's game at Connecticut (which Turner will miss for the second season in a row, regardless). Either Turner will immediately have surgery on the shoulder and be lost for the season or she will try to play on with a brace.
Reimer's status is uncertain in a different sense: The junior is cleared to play, but her availability is essentially dependent on her pain threshold -- an unpleasant way to spend the winter.
There was some indication of a new normal on the game's first possession. Notre Dame claimed the tip but managed only a Michaela Mabrey missed 3-point attempt to beat the shot clock after nearly 30 seconds of uncertain offense. Westbeld's offensive rebound kept the ball in Notre Dame's hands just long enough for an Ohio State defender to deflect it out of bounds. Unable to find an open player in the offensive end, the Fighting Irish were forced to pass the ball into the backcourt and start over.
Finally, the ball in her team's hands for 50 seconds, Allen's 3-pointer slipped through the net.
Not every point required that much effort, but it wasn't far off. Playing perhaps the ideal opponent, as top-10 opponents go, in an Ohio State team for which rebounding looks like a potentially season-marring ailment, Notre Dame piled up 19 offensive rebounds to compensate for 38 percent shooting and 18 turnovers.
"We're looking for her more. We're giving her more opportunities. We're running more sets for her." Muffet McGraw on Madison Cable
Allen turned in as good an eight-turnover performance as any player will ever produce by also totaling 20 points, six rebounds, five assists and drawing at least three charges, including back-to-back calls on plays that could have given the Buckeyes the lead in the fourth quarter.
And with Notre Dame trailing for one of the few times all night, Cable hit a 3-pointer with 56 seconds to play to regain a 72-70 lead, then claimed a defensive rebound and hit two free throws after Kelsey Mitchell's missed attempt to tie the game in the closing seconds.
"I thought I was kind of open, and I knew that we needed to shoot it and at least try to get the rebound if it didn't go in," Cable said of the 3-pointer that came 26 seconds after another of her rebounds began the possession. "I thought it had a decent look, so it looked good, it went in."
Teammates will vouch for Cable as one of the strongest -- and funniest -- personalities on the team. At least once against Ohio State, which would be a below-average total if it was the only time, Allen gently stepped in front and set a buffer between Cable and the referee when the former disagreed with a call. But that is about the juiciest quote Cable is likely to offer. At least in public, she very much lets her actions do the talking for her.
Cable missed her entire freshman season with stress fractures in both feet and played modest minutes her first two seasons on the court before emerging as a vital substitute who averaged more than 20 minutes a game last season. There wasn't much drama to the decision beyond the coach asking the player to confirm that she would like to return for this fifth season. But the granting of that hardship eligibility might save a season that appeared destined to be defined by the year of eligibility that Loyd surprisingly ceded in order to turn pro.
"We're asking her to do a lot more," McGraw said after Cable proved instrumental in a win at South Dakota State a few days before Thanksgiving. "We're looking for her more. We're giving her more opportunities. We're running more sets for her. Defensively, she's always been a great defender, so we're using her more in that role, as well. I think we're wearing her out. But she's coming ready every single minute. She's diving on the floor no matter how tired she is."
And that was the role before Turner got hurt. In the past two games against UCLA and Ohio State, Cable played 73 minutes, scored 47 points, grabbed 20 rebounds and hit 8-of-14 3-point attempts.
"I think just Madi's playing with a ton of confidence right now," Allen said. "Her 3-point shot is working really well for her. She's always played really, really hard for us. So I think we're really confident whenever Madi is in the game, and she can give us any spark that we need at the moment."
It wasn't just Allen and Cable, which is one reason the Fighting Irish beat an Ohio State team that struggled to get anything from anyone other than Mitchell and Shayla Coper. The team's lone true post, Westbeld might like to have some of her short-range shots back, but she finished with 14 points and six rebounds in 35 minutes. Huffman finished with nine rebounds, including seven on the offensive end, and three assists; while undersized and at times hesitant to shoot, she has the high post skills that fit Notre Dame's offense.
If a team that already lost one of its well-regarded freshmen for the season, Ali Patberg, also loses Turner and lives a day-to-day existence with Reimer's availability, this might be the new normal. It won't be easy, and it will never be more difficult than Saturday at Connecticut (ESPN2, 5:15 p.m. ET).
"We just don't have the shot blocking," McGraw said of life without Turner. "I thought they made a lot of shots around the basket that Bri maybe would have altered. So we've got to do a better job of not letting them get that far. We've got to be more physical, we've got to help down and maybe trap the block. Just be a little more active defensively, switching zone, man, junk -- we're playing everything we can think of. We're trying to keep them off balance in a different way."
They didn't have Turner, Loyd or Reimer. They didn't have Skylar Diggins or Natalie Novosel. They didn't have the Four Horsemen.
They had Allen, Cable, Huffman and Westbeld. On this night, impressively if imperfectly, that was enough.