Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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tainly looking back on it I think it re- ally helped me. "A lot of it was it was more impor- tant to find the right fit with a recruit, the right chemistry with the team, more so than somebody that was tal- ented. Notre Dame is a special place and it really takes special people to truly understand that. It was some- thing that I had to learn, too. We re- cruited some really good players, but it just didn't work and we didn't have the chemistry. "And back then coaching was more of a dictatorship. The relationship with players is so important and I had to learn a lot the first few years on deal- ing with them." Because the program was still in a fledgling stage, McGraw had an op- portunity to grow with it. "I was fortunate because when I came on board here I had a chance to make mistakes," she said. "I don't think coaches now … they're given three years to turn a program around. You just can't do it sometimes in that amount of time. I was fortunate that the administration was patient in help- ing guide me through some of those early ups and downs." BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME A couple of seminal moments for McGraw occurred in the 1990s. One was signing the outside-inside com- bination of Beth Morgan (Cunning- ham), now the associate head coach, and Katryna Gaither in 1993. The duo remains Nos. 2 and 3 on the all-time scoring chart and as seniors they pro- pelled the Cinderella run to the 1997 Final Four, completing McGraw's first decade at Notre Dame. The other was joining the Big East in 1995 — the year after Connecticut became women's college basketball's Goliath with a 35-0 finish and the first of its eight national titles. "It raised the level of our program," McGraw said. Buoyed by the 1997 Final Four, Mc- Graw continued to find the ideal fits while developing them into premier players, most notably center Ruth Ri- ley, the National Player of the Year during Notre Dame's stunning 2001 march to the national title. Earlier in the year, the Irish sold out the Joyce Center for the first time for a women's game with an upset of Con- necticut. In the Final Four, they upset the Huskies — who would win the next three titles — again and then beat Purdue in the championship. Today, the women's games routinely draw more than 8,000 per game in the 9,149-seat Purcell Pavilion, a pipe dream when McGraw first took the helm. "I remember talking about early on how I'd love to see the arena packed for a women's game," she said, "and a lot of people chuckled about that and didn't think that ever was going to happen — and it certainly took us a long time." Following the national title, Notre Dame made it back to the Sweet 16 three times the next eight years and was 9-8 in the NCAA Tournament. The nadir was losing in the first round at home to Minnesota in 2009. Not bad, but McGraw had reached a coaching crossroads, including won- dering if the dream season of 2001