What’s the best way that Butler’s women’s soccer team can announce itself as a BIG EAST Conference contender this season?

Well, upsetting a top-10 foe before the Bulldogs get into conference play would be one big way to do it.

Butler hasn’t lost through its first four matches of the 2024 campaign, but it’ll get its biggest test yet of the young season when former national champion Notre Dame pays a visit to Indianapolis for a 7 p.m. (ET) Sunday kickoff.

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Though the Fighting Irish are a consistent force and are consistently making the NCAA Tournament, Butler hasn’t shied away from them in previous meetings over the years. Adding another notch over Notre Dame in their series definitely wouldn’t hurt the Bulldogs’ confidence going forward.

Here’s a look ahead at all you need to know as a top-10 opponent visits Butler this weekend, with the match being streamed live and exclusively on FloFC:

Butler Has Rolled To An Undefeated Start

Yes, it’s very early in the 2024 season, but Butler’s performances so far on the pitch have been indicative of a squad that has little plan to finish fourth in the BIG EAST — the place that the league’s coaches in preseason predicted the Bulldogs to finish.

Heading into its match against the Fighting Irish, Butler is 3-0-1 with a pair of shutouts and a total of 12 goals scored as the co-head coach duo of Tari St. John and Rob Alman have another solid side cooking in Indianapolis. 

The Bulldogs have largely dominated who they’ve faced so far, outshooting their foes 77-26 (34-14 on target) through four games with a 29-7 advantage in corner kicks and 13 assists to the opposition’s three. Their final match before Notre Dame, a 3-0 win at home over Ball State on Thursday night, was more of the same; Butler outshot the Cardinals 17-7 as Sara Trandji, Lea Larouche and Talia Sommer all converted their chances and goalkeeper Anna Pierce kept her second clean sheet of the year.

Butler was last unbeaten through its first four matches of a season in 2022, when it went on a streak to start the year that was capped off by a 1-0 upset of then-No. 9 Michigan. A win over the No. 9-ranked Fighting Irish this weekend, therefore, would make for a little bit of deja vu.

Notre Dame Is As Consistent As It Gets

If you want a definition of blue blood in college women’s soccer, you won’t find many better examples out there than the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.

Only North Carolina and Florida State have more national championships in women’s soccer than Notre Dame’s three, which puts the Fighting Irish tied with Stanford for third all-time since the NCAA began holding a national women’s soccer tournament in 1982. 

Notre Dame has only failed to make the NCAA Tournament twice in 1993 as it is coming off of three consecutive trips to the national postseason, with a run to the national quarterfinals in 2022 being the highlight of that stretch. Three different players (Kerri Hanks twice, Anne Makinen and Cindy Daws) have won the women’s Hermann Trophy — college soccer’s equivalent to the Heisman Trophy — since it was first handed out in 1988, making it one of the few schools with multiple winners.

The Irish were great once again in 2023, finishing second in the Atlantic Coast Conference’s regular-season standings behind eventual national champion Florida State and earning an at-large selection to the NCAA Tournament, where they took down in-state opponent Valparaiso in the opening round as a No. 3 seed before falling to Memphis in the Round of 32.

Youth Is Powering The Fighting Irish

Notre Dame may be a top-10 team nationally, but so far in 2024, it’s a dangerous crop of underclassmen who are making it go.

After dropping their season opener by a 2-1 margin against Michigan State on Aug. 15, the Fighting Irish have roared back to win three straight — and outscored their opponents by a combined 12-0 margin in the process — as they’ve picked up wins against Samford (6-0), TCU (4-0) and Michigan (2-0).

Through four games, Notre Dame’s top three point-getters are all underclassmen, led by white-hot freshman midfielder/forward Izzy Engle and her five goals with one assist. Last year’s Gatorade Minnesota Girls Soccer Player of the Year has immediately turned into the Irish’s talisman, scoring a second-half hat-trick (in just 10 minutes and 30 seconds, no less) against Samford to announce her arrival onto the scene.

Freshman midfielder Grace Restovich and sophomore forward Charlie Codd have also emerged as key pieces of the Irish’s attack, with both scoring in Notre Dame’s win over the Wolverines on Thursday night. Codd in particular has either picked up an assist or scored in each of the Irish’s first four games, and she’ll additionally be someone that Butler will need to hone in on if it wants to win.

Lister Emerging As Butler’s Super Sub

Few players in soccer can help turn the tide of a match like an effective option off of the bench, and Leila Lister has become that option for the Bulldogs early on in the 2024 season.

The junior forward from Reading, England hasn’t started a match this year and has only played 146 minutes, but she has without a doubt utilized her time on the pitch efficiently with two goals and an assist through four games.

Though Sommer (three goals, one assist) and Abigail Isger (two goals, one assist) have been the driving forces of the Bulldogs’ attack so far, Lister is the person who gets the call when St. John and Alman want a spark off of the bench to create some juice in the attacking third. Lister has provided exactly that, nabbing an equalizer against Ohio to rescue a draw for Butler in its season-opener while also assisting a goal against Purdue and scoring one herself against Drake.

Lister was held off of the scoresheet across her 44 minutes played Thursday against Ball State, but watch for her to potentially rebound against Notre Dame this weekend in a big way, especially if the game is close and/or Butler is needing something to happen on the attack late in the match.

Bulldogs-Irish’s History Has Some Battles

The past three matchups between Notre Dame and Butler’s women’s soccer teams have been split evenly at 1-1-1 with 10 total goals spread between those games.

That prior history means that Sunday night’s showdown has a chance to be just as thrilling and intense.

Before the Bulldogs and Fighting Irish played the first leg of a home-and-home last season, they did the same in 2017 and 2018 as they clashed against one another for the first time since 2003. 

That 2017 match in South Bend — each teams’ season opener — saw the game finish in a 0-0 draw after two overtimes, though with a combined 21 shots and 11 corners across 110 minutes it wasn’t lacking much in terms of action. The scoring floodgates opened up in the 2018 rematch at Butler, however, as it was the Bulldogs who ripped four goals past the then No. 20-ranked Irish to take a 4-1 victory.

Notre Dame wasn’t staying down for long in the season series, though. In their first game against each other in five years in 2023, Butler scored first but the Fighting Irish scored four unanswered (with all goals being scored in the second half) to take a 4-1 win of their own against the Bulldogs, which ended up being one of Notre Dame’s most high-scoring performances of last season.

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