PISCATAWAY, N.J. -- It was the kind of game where it felt for the longest time like the cheers that escorted the halftime show off the court might go unmatched on the night.
Although to be fair, the grade-school drum corps that dazzled during intermission of Monday's game between No. 3 Notre Dame and Rutgers set the bar high.
When people talk about the grind of conference play, this is it. Playing the back end of a frigid road trip that first took them to Syracuse, Notre Dame persevered in a 75-63 win, if your glass tends toward remaining half full.
If you already drained your glass, your inclination might be to say the Fighting Irish escaped.
But after a weekend when the Top 25 took body blow after body blow like something out of a Leonard-Hagler fight, and after Notre Dame's fourth game in eight days, there is something to be said for persevering and escaping.
"I'm thrilled to end this week," Notre Dame coach Muffet McGraw said without irony on a Monday night. "I think when we looked at this on the schedule and saw that four games in eight days stretch, and two road games on the Saturday, Monday, I just hoped that our depth would prevail. And I think that's how we won the game tonight."
That's nothing new. Balance and continuity are Notre Dame's identity. It's in the playing rotation that returned intact from last season and the distribution of scoring this season that saw six players score between nine and 14 points on this night against Rutgers -- just as six players average between 7.8 points and 13.7 points per game for the season.
Throwing out the Connecticut game, that has kept Notre Dame perfect through the ups and downs of a long regular season. But if the Fighting Irish are to live up to the ranking they reclaimed after losses by Tennessee and Ohio State the past two weeks, and show postseason sprinting speed to match their current endurance, it will likely have a lot to do with the only two faces who weren't around at this time a season ago.
So much about this team is familiar. What Skylar Diggins and Devereaux Peters can be by March or even April remains a tantalizing unknown.
Diggins scored six early points and then sailed like a ship into fog during a roughly 20-minute stretch during which she held up her end of the bargain on defense but vanished on offense. She looked, if only by her absence, like the freshman she is against a Rutgers team that scraped its way back into the game with a suffocating press.
Only Diggins did what most freshmen can't do, coming out of the shadows and seizing the spotlight when her team needed her to down the stretch. A pull-up jumper, an end-to-end run in transition and free throws later, she had eight of her team's final 25 points, including two key back-to-back baskets after Rutgers cut its deficit to two points 52-50.
No freshman, nor probably any player, is going to be a force for 40 minutes every game in February. But Diggins showed she can do it for almost an entire game, as she did against Syracuse two days before, or when it counts.
"I think she's doing a really good job of controlling her emotions," McGraw said. "And I think out there on the floor, when you're with [Melissa Lechlitner, Ashley Barlow, Lindsay Schrader and Becca Bruszewski], I think that's helping her game because she has the veterans surrounding her. And they know; they know when to settle her down, they know when to give her the ball and let her go. And she had a coast-to-coast drive that was spectacular, that will probably be on the ESPN highlight film tonight. She just got it and was like, 'I'm scoring.' And we need her to that; we like when she's very creative."
With Diggins, it's only a matter of how good she can be and how quickly she can get there. With 6-foot-2 junior Devereaux Peters, it's a matter of what she'll be. Playing just her 11th game this season after returning from a second torn ACL, Peters finished with 11 points and five rebounds. Already just five blocks off the team lead for the season, despite her late start, she adds the potential for something Notre Dame lacks inside. She's not a back-to-the-basket banger, but she can be a good rebounder and a defensive presence for a team lacking on both counts inside.
"I think she's going to get a lot better," McGraw said. "I think she's a little unsure where she's going to get her shots in the offense. And she's fine not getting them, but I would like her to get some. So we need her defense, we need her rebounding; I think she could do a little better job of both of those. But I think by March, she should be pretty close to 100 percent."
And if Diggins and Peters reach their potential by March, a team that seems ideally suited for the marathon of winter might yet have a closing kick to show off.
