Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo wins national award for defensive prowess
· Yahoo Sports
Notre Dame junior guard Hannah Hidalgo had a monster season and got even bigger on Wednesday evening. She has been named 2026 Naismith Women's Defensive Player of the Year, capping what was a memorable campaign for the basketball superstar.
The award is given annually to the nation's best defensive player and it recognizes Hidalgo's continued excellence and grown on the defensive side of the game. Her relentless on-the-ball pressure, elite instincts, and ability to disrupt opposing offenses gave opposing coaches nightmares in game-planning against.
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Hidalgo's numbers highlight her dominance and show how well-deserving she was for this award. For the season, Hannah averaged 5.6-steals per game which raised her average to an incredible 4.7-steals every game for her career. Hannah set an NCAA-record for steals in a season with 202 steals and a tournament-record 29 steals over four games. The chaos she can cause on the defensive end compliments her offensive impact. For the season, Hannah averaged 25.3-points, 6.9-rebounds, and 5.2-assists per game all while shooting at 47.5% from the field.
The Naismith award is just another addition for Hidalgo's trophy case and she was also named the ACC's Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year for her play this season. Hannah continued her stellar play in the postseason posting a triple-double which an analyst dubbed as the most incredible singular tournament performance in the history of women's college basketball. Unfortunately she couldn’t bring home all the awards on Wednesday, as she wasn’t a finalist for Player of the Year which went to Connecticut’s Sarah Strong.
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐃𝐞𝐟𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐧 𝐂𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐠𝐞 𝐁𝐚𝐬𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐛𝐚𝐥𝐥.
— Naismith Awards (@NaismithTrophy) April 1, 2026
Congratulations to @HannahHidalgo of @ndwbb on being named our 2026 Naismith Women’s College Defensive Player of the Year, Presented by @moleculesleep. pic.twitter.com/3UZzWMyAPo
Incredibly, despite all her career accolades and accomplishments, Hannah still has one more season left in South Bend next year where she will hope to take the Fighting Irish to a National Championship, which at this point seemingly is the only award she has not yet been able to win.
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This article originally appeared on Fighting Irish Wire: Notre Dame's Hannah Hidalgo wins Naismith Defensive Player of the Year