Pulmonary embolism sidelines Notre Dame guard Abby Prohaska indefinitely

Mike Berardino | IndyStar

Show Caption Hide Caption Notre Dame women's basketball coach Muffet McGraw on Abby Prohaska Notre Dame women's basketball coach Muffet McGraw on the status of guard Abby Prohaska (bilateral pulmonary embolism)

SOUTH BEND – After sending its highly decorated starting five to the WNBA, Notre Dame was hoping to rely on the big-game experience of sparkplug guard Abby Prohaska.

Instead, the 16th-ranked Fighting Irish are praying for her continued recovery after the sophomore was recently diagnosed with blood clots in both of her lungs.

“The amount of time I will be out is indefinite, but I will be right alongside this team for every game I cannot play,” Prohaska posted on her Twitter account Monday. “I am thankful for the endless support and love from my family, my teammates, my coaches, and my friends. This is just a bump in the road.”

Prohaska, a sophomore from the Cincinnati area, signed her note and added the hashtags #SEETHEFUTURE and #BLESSED.

On the eve of Notre Dame’s season opener Tuesday night at Fordham, Notre Dame coach Muffet McGraw said it will be difficult to fill the void. The best-case scenario for Prohaska’s return is January, McGraw said.

“It’s a huge loss not having Abby for so many reasons,” McGraw said. “She is somebody that gives energy because she comes in and she takes charges and hustles for loose balls. She’s somebody you could point to for the freshmen to look up to and say, ‘This is how you’re supposed to practice, this is how you’re supposed to play.’"

Prohaska has been attending practice as an observer but she has yet to be cleared for conditioning. She will not fly with the team to New York for the season opener.

“It’s very, very serious,” junior center Mikayla Vaughn said. “Even aside from basketball, I’m just keeping her in my thoughts and prayers. I’m sure it’s been extremely difficult. It’s something you really weren’t expecting. It wasn’t anything you really could have prevented. I know it’s been tough for her.”

Notre Dame women's basketball coach Muffet McGraw on team identity Notre Dame women's basketball coach Muffet McGraw struggles to identify a team strength on the eve of the season opener

ENERGETIC BUNNY

Prohaska averaged just 1.5 points and 1.8 assists last season, when she made three starts and played 14 minutes a game, but her outsized contributions during the NCAA tournament helped the Irish reach the championship game for a second straight season.

When star guard Arike Ogunbowale picked up her third foul in the third quarter of an Elite Eight matchup against Stanford, Prohaska sparked a 13-4 run that wiped out a three-point deficit. A week later, in the Final Four semifinal against Connecticut, Prohaska posted a plus-8 while she was in the game.

As Prohaska performed sluggishly in the early stages of fall practice, McGraw and Prohaska’s teammates wondered what was wrong.

“Sometimes when you come into practice and someone’s having an off day, you think, ‘Oh, maybe they had a bad day in class; maybe they have something going on personally,’" Vaughn said. “We didn’t really know, and Abby didn’t know either.”

Considering Vaughn called Prohaska one of the team’s “energetic bunnies” and one of its best defenders, the drop-off was impossible to ignore.

Asked about the 5-10 Prohaska on Oct. 15, McGraw was muted in her assessment.

“She’s got to really step up her game and be more of a scorer,” McGraw said. “’She’s got to be more of a leader defensively. She’s got to do more in really every aspect of the game.”

Notre Dame guard Abby Prohaska is out indefinitely after blood clots Notre Dame women's basketball guard Abby Prohaska is out indefinitely with a pulmonary embolism in both lungs

When Prohaska continued to struggle, assistant athletic trainer Anne Marquez and the team’s medical staff took the guard for testing. Prohaska’s bloodwork initially came back normal, McGraw said, and the player returned to practice.

“Honestly, she just felt like she wasn’t running as well as she was,” McGraw said. “She looked a little out of shape. There were quite a few clues that we looked at.”

On Thursday Oct. 17, just as fall break was set to arrive, Prohaska struggled through another afternoon practice and wound up in the emergency room later that day.

“She continued to practice but she knew she wasn’t 100 percent,” McGraw said. “She was not feeling well for a while. Finally, she actually started to have some pain, which before she was just not being able to keep up.”

MANY QUESTIONS

Put on blood thinners, Prohaska was able to use fall break to rest and begin the long process of building back up to her usually energetic self.

“She’s in pretty good spirits,” McGraw said. “As could be expected, it’s disappointing. It’s kind of a huge blow to know that something life-threatening could happen to you at the age of 19.”

McGraw credited the guard for being honest with the team’s medical staff and with herself, even as her sophomore season was in danger of being cut short. As it turned out, so much more was at stake than just a few minutes of playing time.

“I think that’s to her (credit),” McGraw said. “She’s somebody that likes to push through and just keep working harder and harder. So, I’m just so thankful that she finally said, ‘I can’t take it anymore.’“

Left with just seven scholarship players, including a pair of freshman starters — 6-2 Sam Brunelle and 5-10 Anaya Peoples — the Irish will have to lean on Prohaska in a different way now. Her energy and enthusiasm will come from the bench for home games and possibly select road games as her condition improves.

“It’s hard to see anybody who’s 19 have to go through anything this tough,” McGraw said. “When you face adversity, you learn a lot through it. You learn a lot about yourself. She’s handling it great, she really is, but it’s going to get tougher as the season goes on.”

Graduate transfers Marta Sniezek (Stanford) and Destinee Walker (North Carolina) will start in the backcourt for an Irish team that also lost a pair of transfers after last season: Danielle Patterson (Indiana) and Jordan Nixon (Texas A&M). In all, Notre Dame must replace 82.1 points per game from the nation’s highest-scoring offense or 92.7 percent of last year’s production.

After averaging 34.4 wins over the past nine seasons, including seven trips to the Final Four, McGraw admittedly enters this season with more question marks than she could ever remember in her first 32 years at the helm.

“Defensively, we’ve got a lot of holes there,” McGraw said. “We’re trying to see what our zone looks like at this point in the season. What’s the man-to-man look like? Who can we count on to score? Who’s going to be the one we give the ball to late-game? What really is going to be our strength going down the stretch? Big questions we have to answer yet.”

Prohaska’s loss, likely for at least the next two months, only adds to the uncertainty.

Follow Notre Dame Insider Mike Berardino on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @MikeBerardino. His email is mberardino@gannett.com.