Tag: Muffet McGraw

Notre Dame dominates Purdue – quick recap

It’s always good to beat Purdue!

The No. 14 Notre Dame women’s basketball team had no trouble at all against in-state rival Purdue Sunday, trouncing the Boilermakers 76-39.

Hannah Hidalgo had a great floor game for the Irish as she led in nearly every category.  Her 23 points, 10 rebounds, 8 assists, and 7 steals played a huge part in the game being such a blowout.

Nat Marshall was huge for Notre Dame, blocking six shots and scoring 14 points in the victory.

Notre Dame started hot, jumping out to an 11-0 lead before Purdue scored a point.  The Boilermakers bounced back quickly with a 7-0 run themeselves but that was about as close as things would get.

Notre Dame held Purdue to just 7 second quarter points and held a 35-18 halftime advantage in which they never looked back.

Before the game, a Muffet McGraw statue was unveiled outside Purcell Pavillion.  Much of the sold out crowd attended that ceremony before stepping in and watching the Irish dominate.

Notre Dame is now 8-1 on the season and hosts Western Michigan on Thursday at 6 p.m. ET.

Notre Dame legend Muffet McGraw to have statue outside Joyce Center

Congrats, Coach!

[autotag]Muffet McGraw[/autotag] coached herself to two national championships with Notre Dame and the Basketball Hall of Fame. Now, her likeness will live forever outside the Joyce Center. Joining the many Notre Dame coaching legends with statues on the school’s athletic complex, McGraw will have her own statue unveiled before the Irish’s Dec. 17 game against Purdue.

McGraw earned 848 of her 936 career victories at Notre Dame, where she coached the women’s basketball program from 1987 to 2020, finish below .500 only twice during that time. Only six coaches are ahead of her on the all-time Division I wins list. She was named the consensus national coach of the year three times.

McGraw coached 20 WNBA players, five Olympians and 22 All-Americans. Among her most notable players at Notre Dame were [autotag]Ruth Riley[/autotag], [autotag]Skylar Diggins[/autotag], [autotag]Brianna Turner[/autotag], [autotag]Jewell Loyd[/autotag], [autotag]Kayla McBride[/autotag] and [autotag]Arike Ogunbowale[/autotag].

Join us in congratulating this Irish coaching legend. May she serve as an inspiration for Notre Dame women’s basketball players and coaches in the generations to come.

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Follow Geoffrey on Twitter: @gfclark89

ESPNU to Honor Muffet McGraw on Monday

Either way, clearly a historic career by McGraw who finishes as one of the legends of women’s college basketball.  If you’re working from home Monday it’ll be a good day to have a few all-time classic Notre Dame and McGraw victories on in the background.

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Recently retired Muffet McGraw will get a day in her honor on ESPNU Monday as the channel will dedicate the day to some of her greatest accomplishments at Notre Dame.

Some all-time great moments in that slew of games but I feel like at least one of the time slots should be dedicated to the a game or two from 2000.  Knocking off number-one Connecticut or winning the national championship over Purdue in thrilling fashion, both of which were thrillers and originally aired on ESPN?

Either way, clearly a historic career by McGraw who finishes as one of the legends of women’s college basketball.  If you’re working from home Monday it’ll be a good day to have a few all-time classic Notre Dame and McGraw victories on in the background.

Niele Ivey speaks ahead of Notre Dame’s second-round NCAA tourney game

How do you feel after reading these quotes from the coach?

SOUTH BEND – As a player, [autotag]Niele Ivey[/autotag] experienced what Purcell Pavilion is like when it hosts the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament. Now as the coach at Notre Dame, she knows what it’s like from the sidelines. The Irish’s first-round win over Southern Utah confirmed what she knew about the warm atmosphere the program’s fans provide. She’ll get to experience it again in the second round against Mississippi State.

While she still was reveling about the win over the Thunderbirds, she has another tournament game to prepare for. She knows what the Bulldogs will bring, and it’s her responsibility to relay that information to her team. She did that during practice the day before the Irish’s next test, and she then relayed her thoughts to assembled media during a news conference afterwards. While she obviously wouldn’t give away her exact strategy, she showed she’s been paying attention to the Bulldogs’ game.

Here is what she said during her post-practice news conference:

Notre Dame Women’s Basketball NCAA Tournament History

One of the absolute best programs in the country.

Notre Dame women’s basketball is one of the best-known programs in the entire country and has been for quite some time.  Under the direction of Muffet McGraw who took over as head coach in the 1987-88 season, Notre Dame has gone to the NCAA Tournament 27 times, starting with their first bid in 1992.

Although it was a relative short time ago, Notre Dame has quickly arose towards the top of the list of best women’s college basketball programs nationally.  They’ve won two national championships, and have turned into a regular in the Final Four.

Here is how Notre Dame has fared all-time in the NCAA Tournament.

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ACC honors galore for Notre Dame

So many Irish folks won awards that we had to make a listicle out of this story.

When you win the outright ACC regular-season championship, as Notre Dame did, many conference honors are sure to come. That’s exactly what happened when the ACC unveiled its annual honors. The best part is the honors weren’t limited to those who are on the court every game.

All of this is happening ahead of the ACC Tournament, which begins Wednesday in Greensboro, North Carolina. Having earned one of the top four seeds, the Irish received an automatic berth to the quarterfinals, which will take place Friday. As the top seed, they will play the winner of the second-round game between Syracuse and an NC State program that has given them problems over the past year.

Joe Lunardi’s latest Bracketology has the Irish holding steady as the No. 3 seed in the quadrant featuring undefeated and top-ranked South Carolina. Should the Gamecocks draw the Irish in the Elite Eight in that scenario, they’ll have to deal with these heavy hitters that have made the Irish such a force this season:

Notre Dame coaching legend Muffet McGraw laments NIL

Try as the Hall of Famer might, she can’t stop the winds of change in college athletics.

As far as Notre Dame legend and Basketball Hall of Famer [autotag]Muffet McGraw[/autotag] is concerned, she got out of coaching at the right time. With the emergence of NIL, one more layer has been added to a college athletics landscape that’s becoming as complicated to understand as tax law.

A few months after receiving the NCAA’s Pat Summitt Award, McGraw sat down for an interview with Andy Katz and discussed various topics. When Katz asked her opinion on NIL, she didn’t hold back:

McGraw seems to begrudgingly accept that today’s college athletes are a different breed. Not only are they looking to get paid, but they no longer have the patience to spend their first season or two on the bench. Loyalty in college sports has become as fragmented as it is at the professional level. The days of simply being happy to get a free ride at a prestigious university through an athletic scholarship are over.

No one can predict how this all ends, but we’re at a real crossroads with college athletics. We probably will see a different landscape in five years, let alone 10. College athletes will go where the money and playing opportunities are, and there’s nothing any coach, recruiter, athletic director or administrator can do about it. The balance of power has shifted at long last, and it’s time to accept that.

Contact/Follow us @IrishWireND on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Notre Dame news, notes, and opinions.

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Notre Dame wins outright ACC regular-season championship

Feels nice to be alone on the conference mountaintop.

[autotag]Niele Ivey[/autotag]’s transformation as a worthy successor to [autotag]Muffet McGraw[/autotag] officially has been completed. With Notre Dame needing a road win over Louisville in its regular-season finale to clinch at least a share of the ACC regular-season title, the pressure couldn’t have been higher. The road was made tougher with the sudden loss of [autotag]Olivia Miles[/autotag], one of the country’s best players, to a right knee injury. All signs pointed to a disappointing precursor to the ACC Tournament.

Instead, Ivey kept her team focused, and the Irish overcame a 10-point third-quarter deficit to come away with a hard-fought 68-65 win over the Cardinals. With Duke losing to North Carolina, the Irish won their first outright ACC regular-season championship since 2017. They last won a share of the ACC regular-season title in 2019.

The 24-4 Irish finished conference play with a 15-3 record. They will have the top seed in the conference tournament, which begins Wednesday in Greensboro, North Carolina. Their first game will be in the quarterfinals Friday against the winner of Thursday’s second-round game between NC State and Syracuse.

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Contact/Follow us @IrishWireND on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Notre Dame news, notes, and opinions.

Follow Geoffrey on Twitter: @gfclark89

Former Notre Dame Athletic Director Gene Corrigan Dead at Age 91

Gene Corrigan is responsible for hiring perhaps the two best coaches in Notre Dame’s recent history in Lou Holtz and Muffet McGraw.

One of my favorite things that has happened since I took over managing Fighting Irish Wire back in October is that things you thought you were aware of or hip to get magnified ten-fold.

That could be assistant coaches being hired or fired, recruiting information or simply something from the history of Notre Dame.

I’ll be honest here (I always am but that’s a way to transition myself out of my comfort zone a bit):

I had no idea who Gene Corrigan was until his death at 91 years old was announced Saturday.

Some quick research helped me discover he wasn’t just the former commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference, but was Notre Dame’s athletic director from 1981 to 1987.

That made me realize that hey, Gene Corrigan is responsible for hiring perhaps the two best coaches in Notre Dame’s recent history in Lou Holtz and Muffet McGraw.

I had no idea that Corrigan had three children graduate from the University of Notre Dame, or that one of them, Kevin, had been the lacrosse coach at Notre Dame since 1998.

It’s fascinating to read about a man who graduated from Duke in 1952 then got his start in coaching by leading the basketball, soccer and lacrosse teams of Washington and Lee in 1955.

From there he took a job at the University of Virginia where he spent time again coaching a variety of sports before becoming athletic director at Washington and Lee.

That led him again to Virginia where he was athletic director for a decade before a decade before he took the Notre Dame A-D job, replacing the legendary Edward “Moose” Krause.

I also didn’t know until reading Eric Hansen’s piece Saturday that Lou Holtz was anything but a knockout hire at his time and had been coming off a 6-5 season at Minnesota at the time of his hiring.

Corrigan would go on to commission the ACC after leaving Notre Dame in 1987 through 1995 when he became president of the NCAA.

Corrigan clearly lived an incredible life and oversaw the Notre Dame athletic department at an incredibly fascinating time.

Even if I didn’t know anything about him a day ago, he impact on Notre Dame athletics is clearly without end.

All the best to those who knew him and if you’re like me and didn’t even know of him until now, here’s to hoping you also learned a bit about his important legacy to Notre Dame and college sports.

Notre Dame coach Niele Ivey speaks at ACC media day

Think the Irish have another deep tournament run in them?

Entering her third season as the legendary [autotag]Muffet McGraw[/autotag]’s successor, Notre Dame coach [autotag]Niele Ivey[/autotag] has every reason for optimism. She went from .500 in her first year at the helm to 24-9 and an appearance in the Sweet 16. But for a late Irish collapse against NC State in their final game, the Final Four would have been within their reach. Alas, neither Ivey nor her team could be disappointed by how far they had come.

All of that is history now, and Ivey is ready to see what she can do with this year’s Irish. She answered questions about it during the ACC’s media day Tuesday in Charlotte, North Carolina: