OT survivors meet for title
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Mississippi State women’s basketball coach Vic Schaefer and his players carry a constant reminder of how far they went in the NCAA tournament last year, and what must still be done.
It’s right there, engraved on the side of their runner-up rings: “ONE MORE.”
A season after losing 67-55 to South Carolina in the title game, senior guard Morgan William
and the Bulldogs (37-1) will try again to win Mississippi State’s elusive first crown. They play fellow No. 1 seed Notre Dame (34-3) tonight at 6 in a matchup of programs that have spoiled perfect seasons for the mighty Connecticut Huskies in back-to-back years.
“We would say ‘Add
another one’ a lot. ‘One more,’” Schaefer said. “It came from two Navy SEALs who worked with the kids in the fall — Sam and Brian. One of the things they talk about all the time is ‘One more.’”
Schaefer learned a lot from last year’s loss
in the title game. He believes his players were tired after practicing the day after the monumental upset of UConn that ended the Huskies’ record 111-game winning streak. So he has changed his philosophy the second time around and planned to take it a bit easier on his team Saturday.
“I told my seniors, and they called the doctor thinking I had lost my mind,” Schaefer said. “We’re not going to kill ourselves in practice. We’ll spend a lot of time stretching, especially with those kids that played a lot of minutes last night. We are going to shoot a lot, go through their stuff and our stuff. That’s about it.”
The Bulldogs won another thriller, beating Louisville 73-63 in overtime Friday night. This time, though, it was the first semifinal and the players were able to go to bed about three hours earlier than last year.
“Yeah, we watched the UConn-Notre Dame game, but then were able to get to sleep around 12:30 a.m.,” said William, who hit the buzzer-beating shot that dropped UConn last season.
This time it was the Fighting Irish who ended the Huskies’ undefeated season, with Arike Ogunbowale hitting a jumper from the wing with a second left in overtime for a 91-89 victory.
A win tonight would give coach Muffet McGraw a second title at Notre Dame. The Irish won in 2001 before falling short in the championship game in 2011, 2012, 2014 and 2015.
“It’s all about the mindset,” she said. “Really it’s all about this is a game, two teams coming in playing for a national championship. They were here last year. They know what it’s like. So for us, I think just a matter of continuing to do what we’ve been doing and not let the pressure of the moment get to us.”
This might be one of the most improbable NCAA runs by a McGraw team, because the Irish lost four players during the season to ACL injuries. But they never felt sorry for themselves.
“We actually didn’t really talk about it at all,” McGraw said. “We just constantly focus on what we have, what we can do, who’s going to step up, how are the roles changing? What do you need to do now? We never even talked about where we could be or what we should be thinking. We just kept focusing them on the future.”
This will be the first time these programs have played each other. Schaefer, however, is no stranger to McGraw and the Irish. He was an assistant coach on the Texas A&M team that beat Notre Dame to win the 2011 title.
The Irish will need to find a way to deal with Mississippi State’s 6-foot-7 center, Teaira McCowan, who had 21 points and a Final Four-record 25 rebounds against Louisville.
“You’ve got to try to get a body on her, but she’s just so darn big that you can’t outjump her,” McGraw said. “We’ve got to try to keep her off. She does such a great job with her body of getting great position. So I don’t know. We have a couple of plans that we’ll go to, and hopefully one of them will work.”