This year is only Niele's 4th team that she has personally put together since the 2020 recruits were signed in November 2019 while she was at Memphis. So the only fair compare is to use recruiting and transfer commitments and losses for the last 3 seasons where rosters got set and commitments were finalized by both Geno & Niele. Here is the list of players that were added to each team (recruits/xfrs in). As for transfer out we shoudl only commitments by Niele and Geno from 2020.
21/22 ND Miles, Citron; xfr in Dodson; UC Fudd. Ducharme, Poffenbarger, DeBerry xfr in Juhahz
22/23 ND Bransford, Prosper xfrs in Ebo, Watson, Brown xfrs out: NONE; UC Patterson, Brady, Bettencourt, El Alfy xfr Senechel, xfr out Poffenbarger
23/24 ND Hidalgo, Risch; xfrs in Dewolfe, Obinma, xfrs out NONE: UC Arnold. Shade, Samuels; xfrs in NONE, xfrs out: Deberry, Bettencourt?
The 24/25 teams have not been finalized yet as transfers are finalizing their new schools if they leave. Still using the three teams so far, ND has recruited 6 HS seniors who they have retained while UConn recruited 11 HS seniors with 2 already xfrd out and one more still in the portal. As for transfers, Notre Dame recruited 6 who all have so far finished their career at ND while UConn recruited only 2 who also finished their career at UConn. Net net Niele brought in 12 recruits and has lost none on her three teams while Geno recruited 13, but has already lost 2 and possible another.
The truth is if you argue quality of recruits I would take our 6 HS recruits over UConn's 8 HS players remaining as Niele has developed 2 AAs (Hidalgo & Miles) while Geno has yet to have one of these players meet that standard. I'd even take Soni over their best recruit Fudd any day of the week. Then looking at xfrs, UConn's two contributed well as starters, but ND had three starters come in as xfrs on the 3 teams. Then on the court when ND played UConn, ND is 2-1 including winning the last two handily.
One other recruiting effort that you could credit Niele with regarding Muffet's last signing class which Geno also matched, as both coaches kept their best player to stay that extra Covid year to play in college. One might argue that Niele's effort was even more impressive since Maddy had 4 full years of playing whereas Paige wasn't able to play for a whole season as well missed the tournament the previous season.
We will see how next season's team get finalized and than can add that compare, but for now I appreciate how effective Niele's approach has been. It is clear she retained all the players she has signed and even talked a key starter to stay another season. I know there was a lot of angst with the Strong and Chen signing that Geno is doing so much better than Niele, but if you look at the last three years the facts say otherwise. We will see what next season yields.