NOTRE DAME ­— Top seed Notre Dame used the outside shooting of junior Michaela Mabrey and the inside game of Taya Reimer Brianna Turner to turn back pesky DePaul in the second round of the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament Sunday night.

The Blue Demons, who lost to the Fighting Irish 94-93 in overtime earlier this year in Chicago, pushed Notre Dame for a little more than a half before succumbing 79-67 at the Purcell Pavilion at the Joyce Center.

The Fighting Irish (33-2) advance to the Oklahoma City Regional when they will face either No. 5 seed Oklahoma or No. 4 seed Stanford Friday night.

Notre Dame struggled much of the first half with its shooting and with turnovers.

The Fighting Irish were just 13-of-29 in the opening 20 minutes with seven miscues.

That allowed the Blue Demons, who were not much better from the field (12-of-29) to hang around.

DePaul Trailed Notre Dame 37-31 at the half.

The Fighting Irish outscored the Blue Demons 42-36 in the second half behind the 3-point shooting of Mabrey (5-of-7) and the inside play of Turner and Reimer, who combined for 28 points and 21 rebounds.

Mabrey led Notre Dame with 19 points, while Turner and Reimer both had 14 points. The Fighting Irish also got 11 points from Lindsay Allen and 10 points from Jewell Loyd, who had an awful shooting night going 3-of-15.

“I thought Michaela Mabrey had a great stretch where she hit a couple threes, got a couple defensive rebounds, which surprised all of us, and did a really good job on both ends of the floor,” Notre Dame coach Muffet McGraw said. “I thought she had a great performance. Taya Reimer, what a game. I thought an All-American performance from Taya tonight. Those two really just carried us in that stretch.”

DePaul got another outstanding performance from Megan Podkowa in a losing effort as she scored 19 points and grabbed 11 rebounds.

The Blue Demons also got 12 points from Jessica January and 11 points from Brittany Hrynko.

“Notre Dame is a really good team and we knew for us to beat a really good team that we were going to have to play very well on all sides of the basketball,” DePaul coach Doug Bruno said. “I just thought we got a little bit impatient. You have to defend, you have to rebound, and you have to be able to score the ball. I thought we got impatient. When you’re a high scoring team like we are it’s really hard to ask your players to slow down. You can’t ask them to do what they don’t do. We have to play like we play.

“When we get impetuous offensively we basically get ourselves into a scoring rut and that’s what happens. That’s really where the game went. It went there in the first half and I thought we recovered ourselves and put ourselves into position before halftime. We scored the first basket and then gave up a lot of easy ones and the game got away from us, and we weren’t able to get back.”