No. 6 Notre Dame did not lose on Thursday night. The Fighting Irish beat the Miami Hurricanes 1-0 in South Bend, Ind., and closed the regular season as the 2026 Atlantic Coast Conference regular season champions.
Grace Restovich scored the only goal in the 57th minute, with Lily Joseph and Izzy Engle helping set it up. The finish gave Notre Dame a 10-1-6 regular-season record and an 8-1-1 mark in the ACC, while Miami finished 10-5-3 overall and 4-4-2 in conference play.
The result mattered because Notre Dame had been pushing all night and finally turned pressure into a title. It outshot Miami 12-0 in the first half and held the Hurricanes to two shots in the match, but the scoreboard stayed blank until Restovich broke through after the interval. The clean sheet was Notre Dame's seventh of the season, another sign of how little room the defense gave Miami once the game settled in.
For Nate Norman, it was his first ACC regular-season title as the Doug and Lisa Jones Family Head Women’s Soccer Coach, and it gave Notre Dame its second such crown in program history. The last one came in 2016, when Notre Dame beat Miami 2-0 on Oct. 27, 2016 at Alumni Stadium. This time, the same opponent again stood between Notre Dame and the title, but the Irish finished the job in a tighter, harder game.
The unresolved question is less about who Notre Dame beat than how far this team can carry a season built on control, patience and defense. The regular season is over, the conference title is secured, and the next stage now belongs to a Notre Dame side that has already shown it can win when a game is still waiting to be decided.
