NCAA champs: Notre Dame women
Fighting Irish showed resiliency all season
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Before there was rainbow confetti, Rudy theme music, net cutting and a trophy to parade around, Notre Dame was rattled.
Mississippi State held a 13-point lead at halftime and looked like the team poised to win an NCAA national championship game Sunday night. The Fighting Irish lost the composure displayed two nights earlier. Maybe they were exhausted from a thrilling semifinal win over rival Connecticut in overtime. The Huskies had won the last seven matchups, so it would be natural for such a win to be emotionally draining.
Mississippi State outscored the Irish 13-3 in the second quarter and led 30-17 at the break. It was the fewest points Notre Dame had scored in a first half all season. Arike Ogunbowale, who scored the ultra-dramatic game-winner to upset UConn, couldn’t find the basket, going 1-of-10 from the field. Marina Mabrey had seven turnovers. Jackie Young was in foul trouble. Meanwhile, Mississippi State’s dominant 6-7 center Teaira McCowan already had nine points and eight rebounds.
Things weren’t going well. “Their pressure really made us uncomfortable,” longtime Irish assistant coach Niele Ivey said. “We knew what to expect, but I think their pressure in the moment, them scoring, we couldn’t execute. We were totally out of rhythm and doing things we normally don’t do and nothing that we practice.”
Notre Dame needed divine intervention on Easter Sunday. It eventually came with Ogunbowale’s late-game heroics when she scored her second buzzer-beater to lift the Irish to a 61-58 victory, clinching the program’s second NCAA title 17 years to the day after winning its first. The shot went through the basket with one-tenth of a second left.
But before that moment came, Hall of Famer and Coach of the Year Muffet McGraw motivated her players in the locker room.
McGraw, who always looks so calm on the sideline, refocused her team. She encouraged the players to keep shooting, get more rebounds, move without the ball and work together. She reminded her players that they’ve been down by more before. During a regular-season game against Tennessee, Notre Dame trailed by 23 and won by 14; Texas A&M led by 13 in the Sweet 16, and the Irish fought back to win by six.
“It’s nothing for us to come back,” Ogunbowale said. So they did.
Notre Dame went on a 16-1 run to end the third quarter and tie the score 41-41. Ogunbowale got out in transition and made the buckets she missed earlier, Mabrey stopped turning the ball over and Jessica Shepard was more aggressive on the glass (after one rebound in the first half, she finished with six). In the fourth quarter, Notre Dame continued to rally. It delivered only two — but incredibly crucial — three-pointers late. The first came from Mabrey to pull the Irish within two with 1:35 to play, and the second came from Ogunbowale in the right corner at the end.
“Mississippi State knew we were coming back,” Mabrey said. “We just saw the fear in their eyes in the third quarter.”
Notre Dame had come so close to winning its second championship so many times. Since winning its first in 2001, the Irish played in four title games but couldn’t finish. The program has been to eight Final Fours and earned a No. 1 seed seven consecutive times.
“We were getting tired of being the bridesmaid,” McGraw said. “This was great for this team, what they’ve been through, what they’ve gone through.”
The Irish story line all season was how they were able to get through the season without four key members, including All-American Brianna Turner and starting point guard Lili Thompson, who all tore their anterior cruciate ligaments. There were other injuries, too — a broken nose here, a black eye there, a few twisted ankles. This team overcame all that adversity and still managed to beat Geno Auriemma’s undefeated UConn squad in the Final Four and then win a national championship two days later.
With Notre Dame’s championship over Mississippi State, McGraw earned her 800th win with the program. After the trophy presentation, McGraw briskly walked to the locker room but didn’t know what awaited her. Players — current and former — had a cooler of ice water ready to dump on her. AD Jack Swarbrick and Notre Dame President Father John I. Jenkins took part in the celebration.
“To see this team come back from yet another huge deficit, to see Arike make an incredible shot, to see the resilience of a team that never gave up,” McGraw said. “Mississippi State was a tremendous defensive team. They really gave us a lot of problems in the first half. We lost our composure a little bit, but we got it back, and we just kept fighting.
“Thank you, Jesus, on Easter Sunday.”
Added Ogunbowale: “Amen. Hallelujah.”