Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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could be attained again. "It's really difficult once you've been to the summit to fall short year after year," she said. "We didn't want to go to the Final Four, where you had the big coaches convention at that time of year. You don't want to be there if you're not playing." ACT II: FROM THE 'SKY' Months after the 2009 loss to Min- nesota, South Bend native Skylar Dig- gins enrolled as one of the nation's top three prospects. McGraw admits that had Notre Dame not been able to sign Diggins in its own backyard, the program would have remained a solid outfit with maybe a Sweet 16 ceiling, but it might have lost some credibility nationally. Diggins became the program's Pied Piper with her contagious leadership that resulted in back-to-back trips to the national title game in 2011 and 2012, plus another Final Four last year. After going 0-20 versus Tennessee, the Irish have won four straight versus the Volunteers. Incredibly, they have even defeated UConn seven times in the last nine meetings. "If she would have gone somewhere else, we would not be where we are right now," McGraw said. "People did want to follow her. She left us the legacy of the competitiveness that we have, and the drive, and you can hear it in the way Kayla McBride talks about her, and Natalie Achonwa talks about Skylar and what she did for them. She is our biggest cheerleader right now and wants us to win more than anyone." Today, the Irish have five McDon- ald's All-Americans on their roster, and two more arrive next year — led by 6-3 Brianna Turner, who is ranked as the No. 2 senior by ESPNHoop- Gurlz. It's chic now to be Irish. It's also become a self-sufficient pro- gram taking ownership of itself in- stead of just another team. "I surround myself with great peo- ple, great coaches and great players," McGraw said when asked what her "secret sauce" is that has put Notre Dame at the elite level. "They are all self-starters. They're self-motivated. They're extremely hard workers. Ev- erybody does everything they can do to help us win. It's a team effort. They make my job so much easier." Achonwa echoed those thoughts af- ter McGraw's 1,000th career game as head coach, a 100-75 victory versus North Carolina Feb. 27. "We do it for each other, for our coaching staff, and I think that's the unique part about Notre Dame, the bond that you build within the pro- gram and with each other," Achonwa said. "That's the biggest part — to do it for each other." The 32-0 regular season and ACC Tournament title might never again be replicated, but McGraw wasn't in a reflective mood this March. "We have to have a little distance to appreciate what we did," she said. "I know it was hard and I know how hard we worked to achieve it. It wasn't our goal to start out with, and we have so many more things to accomplish before we start thinking about how good that was." That's life on the run toward consis- tent excellence. ✦