Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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S BY LOU SOMOGYI coach Muffet McGraw's squad, which finished the regular season 30-3 and No. 4 in the country. With the return of four starters from ometimes, enormous expecta- tions can lead to a joyless expe- rience. That wasn't the case at Notre Dame this year for head last year's national runner-up team plus the addition of versatile sopho- more swingman Kayla McBride — who missed the second half of last season — the 2011-12 Irish were a pro- hibitive preseason favorite to return to the Final Four, if not capture the national title. Yet on March 12, when ESPN re- vealed the Irish as a No. 1 seed in the Raleigh Regional, the battle-hardened, veteran, business-like Irish women re- sponded with euphoria at Purcell Pa- vilion's Naimoli Family Sports Club, almost seeming like neophytes who had reached the grand stage. "It's like opening up a Christmas Junior Skylar Diggins is on pace to become the third player in Notre Dame history to dole out more than 200 assists in a single season and the first since 2001 — the year the Irish last won the national title. PHOTO BY JOE RAYMOND present and getting the gift you wanted," explained junior guard Sky- lar Diggins, the Big East Player of the Year and one of four finalists for the Naismith National Player of the Year to be announced in April. "All of us have been waiting for this moment since we lost in the championship." This was Notre Dame's 17th consec- 4-WARD, MARCH! No. 1 seed Irish look toward a return to the Final Four utive NCAA Tournament bid (high- lighted by the national title in 2001), McGraw is already in the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame and the pro- gram has been ensconced among the top 10 nationally … yet the attitude that permeates it is to not take any of it for granted. "It means a lot to the program, recruiting-wise, just reputation-wise for Coach McGraw," Diggins said. "Players are going to look here and say, 'Wow, they're a No. 1 seed. They accomplished a lot.' "I don't think people get to see the whole season up to when we got the No. 1 seed, how much work behind the scenes you have to put in. It's so competitive in this college game. … For us to get one of those No. 1 seeds in a pool of so many good teams, that says a lot about our program." En route to the 2012 Big East reg- the previous single-season school re- cord of 10 (which included the NCAA Tournament by the 2001 national champs), but also shattered the regular- season mark of seven set by the 2003-04 and 2004-05 teams. Nine of those 12 wins were by double digits, and four of them by more than 25 points. • In addition to beating No. 1 seed No. 3 Connecticut on the road and at home for the first time, and vanquish- ing a regular-season school-record five teams in the top 10. • The 12 victories eclipsed not only Connecticut twice, Notre Dame de- feated three No. 2 seeds — Duke, Kentucky and Tennessee. (Maryland was the No. 2 seed in Notre Dame's Raleigh Regional.) • The Irish joined North Carolina ular-season title with a 15-1 record, Notre Dame achieved several extraor- dinary feats overall: • The Irish were 12-2 against ranked opponents, highlighted by beating www.BLUEANDGOLD.com feated the Huskies in three straight meetings before falling March 6 in the Big East Tournament held in Hart- ford, Conn. her 2010-11 Irish were "a year away" from national title contention. Her clairvoyance was amiss when A year ago, McGraw predicted that THE LONG WAIT the Irish reached last year's national championship game, where it lost 76-70 to Texas A&M. Consequently, one of the prime challenges McGraw and her team had this season was not allowing a "wake me for the NCAA Tournament" at- titude to infest the program. According to Diggins, the real prob- as the only programs to defeat both UConn and Tennessee in consecutive seasons. Since 1995, the Huskies and Volunteers have combined to win 12 of the 17 women's basketball national titles. • Including last year's Final Four upset of UConn, Notre Dame had de- lem was having almost too much en- ergy at the start of the season. "You could tell in our first game we wanted to come out and win it all in the first possession," she said. "I think we were overzealous a lot of times and being super excited to get on the court and be perfect … 'We gotta be perfect, we gotta be perfect.' " APRIL 2012 53