Any coach who wins a National Title at Notre Dame permanently etches their name in the tradition-laden halls of campus athletics. For Muffet McGraw that time came nearly two decades ago with a then program record 34 wins on the way to a championship. In recent years, McGraw was pushing through numerous boundaries, taking the Fighting Irish to a whole new level of dominance but continually unable to grab a second title.
That is until this past Sunday when Arike Ogunbowale’s heroic game-winning shots in both the semi-final and national final brought McGraw her second championship. This now begs the question–is Muffet McGraw the greatest coach in Notre Dame history? She now becomes the 9th coach in Irish history to have won at least two National Championships:
Janusz Bednarski, Fencing, 3 (2003, 2005, 2011)
Mike DeCicco, Fencing, 5 (1977, 1978, 1986, 1987, 1994)
George Keogan, Men’s Basketball, 2 (1927, 1936)
Gia Kvaratskhelia, Fencing, 2 (2017, 2018)
Frank Leahy, Football, 5 (1940, 1943, 1946, 1947, 1949)
Muffet McGraw, Women’s Basketball, 2 (2001, 2018)
Ara Parseghian, Football, 2 (1966, 1973)
Knute Rockne, Football, 3 (1924, 1929, 1930)
Randy Waldrum, Women’s Soccer, 2 (2004, 2010)
Obviously, there’s a huge amount of subjectivity involved in trying to rank all of these coaches. For its part fencing almost has to be in its own category since so few people (including me) know much about the sport. Beyond the team titles, all 3 coaches have led dozens of individual All-Americans and National Champions which puts that sport on an entirely other level–truly the strongest school sport for Notre Dame over the last 40 years.
Now lost to the history books, George Keogan literally built the Notre Dame basketball program right at a time when Rockne’s ascent with the football program was beginning in South Bend. He put together a pair of pre-NCAA Tournament championships including going a combined 130-17 across 7 separate seasons, passing away tragically at 52 years old.
Randy Waldrum certainly deserves to be in the conversation, notching a pair of national titles in women’s soccer in addition to 7 conference titles and 8 Final Four appearances. However, he inherited a program that had won a national title 4 years prior to his command and had won the Big East in each of those years leading up to his head coaching.
Can anyone move past the mythical status of Rockne or Leahy? Perhaps it’s a fool’s errand to even make a comparison, although one could say Rockne inherited a program that was a sleeping giant (4 undefeated seasons prior to his arrival) and Leahy had pretty much Notre Dame Sleeping Giant 2.0 once more. Both did their fair share of building but also had conditions set that made it extremely favorable to have the greatest football program in the first half of the 20th Century.
McGraw vs. Parseghian is the best argument for now. Ara’s overall body of work and 0.850 winning percentage give him the upper hand in those categories. He certainly resurrected the football program but that was Sleeping Giant 3.0 waiting to happen. Parseghian did spend the first half of his career in South Bend unable to attend bowl games which could’ve increased his resume even further.
Notre Dame women’s basketball only existed for 10 years before Muffet McGraw became head coach in 1987. It took her 9 years for her first great season (1997 Final Four) and despite the National Championship in 2001 there was over a decade of good seasons with disappointing NCAA Tournament finishes. As recent as 8 seasons ago (when she was placed into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame*, after all) McGraw was knocking on the door to legend status but not really in the discussion like today.
*McGraw entered the Naismith Hall of Fame before the start of this 2017-18 season.
Since 2010-11 she’s entered a new stratosphere. Overall, McGraw is 275-27 (.910%) in her last 8 seasons a mark that’s only less absurd in comparison to the UConn machine (292-14, .954% with 4 National Championships over the same span) that’s unparalleled in the sport’s history. Where McGraw may have created some separation with Parseghian is handing UConn 8 of their 14 losses in recent years. The Irish women’s basketball team has arguably played better in big games on the big stage in comparison to Ara’s teams who averaged 1 win over a Top 15 team per year and were famously 9-11-2 against their best rivals in Purdue and USC.
Additionally, while this wasn’t a sisters of the poor squad led by McGraw for 2017-18 (they were ranked 5th and 6th pre-season in each of the polls) the way they overcame major injuries, slow starts, and slayed a pair of great teams in the Final Four put this season as one of the best in Notre Dame school history across all sports.
The best part of this is that McGraw is far from done in her career. Next year, the Irish will be among the title favorites again with a Top 3 pre-season ranking (if not No. 1) almost assuredly coming soon. She may not be the greatest coach in Notre Dame history but another 5 years of winning 90% of her games and another title, possibly going back-to-back? McGraw simply couldn’t be ignored from that conversation and could reach every bit of the mythical status given to Rockne and Leahy.
I think if you break it down, the only period of sustained excellence that can match her last 8 years is the Leahy era, and I think she exceeds that. The top women’s BB programs play each other every year. Then there is the randomness of the tournament. Leahy played tough games, but he did not have to defeat every tough team to win a championship.
She has built a machine, and there is no way it can be called a sleeping giant. It was nothing before she got there. Enough of her former players have coached with her, and are now elsewhere that we should have good pedigreed coaches to replace her with when she decides to hang it up.
They are rarely upset by lesser programs. Of the 27 losses in the last 8 years, I would guess about 9 or 10 are to U. Conn.
If you exclude fencing, I think she is easily the best of any coach not named Rockne or Leahy. I think it is hard to compare and contrast sports, eras, etc. The school’s identity is so wrapped up in its football tradition, it is hard to put her ahead of those two foundational coaches, but I think she has surpassed Ara.
I don’t feel right saying one coach has “surpassed” another (self-interest disclosure – Ara was the coach during my “era” at ND). Nonetheless, among current ND coaches, and going back to the first 5-6 years of Lou Holtz, no ND coach has been as dominant in her sport as Muffet. I enjoy watching her teams’ continued excellence.
True, I can’t even begin to judge based on the differences of eras and sports and simply time itself…No matter what, McGraw’s definitely a legend and deservedly so.
The one slight that stands out to me is only having won 2 national titles in 31 years. The other coaches in the conversation were a lot more dominant versus their peers. But being stuck in the land of giants with Summitt/Geno makes that understandably difficult for McGraw. And again, time/era differences make it futile to directly compare, wasn’t as if Rockne had to go against 2 Bear Bryants simultaneously (or even 1, for that matter).
Hopefully as the article alludes McGraw can yet add a few more in the very near future and bolster the case, which it looks very promising to have that opportunity.
DCIrish, it’s actually 11. Since the 2010-11 season ND is 8-11 vs UConn. For the other 16 losses in that span, 4 to top 3 Baylor, 2 were to top 4 Louisville, 2 to top 4 Stanford, 1 to 2 seed TAMU, 1 to #9 Kentucky, 1 to #12 DePaul, 1 to #15 UCLA, and of the four losses to unranked teams 3 were on the road.
So, in 8 seasons there were only 6 losses to teams outside the top 10!
It’s a very interesting question, and in any case she has to be in the conversation. I think this might be a bit mitigated by how top-heavy women’s college basketball is. That is, if you could get the top-4 teams in women’s college basketball and give the field for the national championship at even odds, you’d take that every time (maybe even top-2). That leads to situations where the best players want to play for those four-five teams, and those recruits are so much better than the next batch that it’s self-reinforcing to some degree. Of course, she got us to be one of those programs in the first place, so her greatness is undeniable.
As a tangent, I’ve often wondered why women’s college basketball is so top-heavy. It’s not like an Olympic sport (many of those also tend to be similarly top-heavy, like Stanford with swimming) that requires a ton of resources for a player growing up or investments by a program. Plus it seems like most girls would at least try basketball at some point in their lives, so it’s not like it’s a narrow pool of participants. Does anybody have thoughts on that?
Just guessing that goes to demonstrate just how dominant/great the very top coaches (Geno out ahead of everyone now) truly are to compile and hoard the top talent and build programs to the point of being so far ahead of the competition. Pretty insane right now that UConn has made the Final Four every year from 2008-now, and I agree that we could probably pick the Final Four teams with high confidence right now for next year
Why it is that the drop is so extreme is beyond me, though in my mind the quantity of young boys who play basketball for thousands or hours enough to develop into really elite talent is just way higher than the total number of girls interested/able to do the same. Perhaps that is shifting and changing, but I think it’s culturally ingrained to have a bigger talent pool for males. Just guessing that like the 3rd best player to the 6th best player on most men’s NCAA D1 teams are generally about the same level of talent (aside from a few outlier teams). In WBB, there’s probably no comparison of the 3rd-6th best players on ND/UConn/Miss St. compared to the average .500 type D-1 team, let alone to the weaker teams where the #1 player probably wouldn’t even make the squad straight up on a powerhouse.
I have wondered about the top heavy nature of it. I agree that it is probably a legacy from a by-gone era. However, Muffett took the Irish from nothing to one of the top teams. She created a virtuous cycle of development and recruiting to march to the top.
There are a few teams over the years that have made runs toward the top, Rutgers, Purdue, Maryland, Texas A&M, but have not sustained it or are clearly a tier down from U.Conn, ND, Stanford and Baylor. Miss. State has two good years. South Carolina is forcing their way in. Same with Duke and Louisville. If they can sustain it, the competition would be better.
There are two schools of thought on dominance. Personally, I think it hurts the women to have say 5 or 6 teams at the top and everyone else way down. Others say people like to watch Goliath. I think they prefer to root for David.
“However, Muffett took the Irish from nothing to one of the top teams. She created a virtuous cycle of development and recruiting to march to the top.”
Yes, and for all that work she had 1 natty in 30 years prior to this weekend. No doubt on your point that McGraw’s done more than 99.9% but compared to UConn’s run of 10 national titles since 2000 it relegates everyone else to barely a blip at this point.
I think it needs the parity. You would never ever see a Loyola #11 seed make Final Four, or even a Michigan-type team make the finals in WBB today. And no one really blinked an eye that Michigan would be capable of it, anyone in the top-20-30 in the men’s side could realistically have a path to the finals these days. That’s lacking on the other side and takes the “madness” out of the tournament.
I’m not saying UConn should be ashamed of themselves or not try to win, of course they should. And maybe long-term they’re pushing teams like ND to raise their program. I do think the sport itself would probably be better off nationally without absolute domination though, but that’s just a personal opinion.
There are only 2 women’s programs with more than 2 NCs. Tenn and U. Conn. Even Stanford, Baylor, and I think Purdue only had 2.
Her first NC was in 2001, and that was pretty hard to do between Tenn and U. Conn. It takes time to have the cycle pay off. Yes, it took her longer than we would have liked to grab the second, but in the run of the last 8 years, there were weird injuries, one-off losses and U. Conn being U. Conn.
I agree with you on domination. March Madness is what it is because every game, or nearly every game, could produce an upset so you have to watch. Plus, the gambling makes everyone interested. Nobody will gamble on a bracket where the 4 #1 seeds make it to the Final Four regularly, or you can be assured that three will. SInce there are few upsets, the games are not all that interesting.
All that said, and to the original question, excluding fencing, I would rank her behind Leahy and Rockne, but ahead of Parseghian.
I couldn’t disagree. As I sort of touched on, I hope McGraw adds a few more and leaves behind a legacy like that of Rockne as that level of importance as program-builder into an undeniable power. That’s why as of now I think I’d have her behind Ara just due to success vs. peers. But with a few more titles that argument goes away. Overall though, I wouldn’t fight any argument to rank any in whatever order one wanted, really subjective exercise.
A 7 seed did make it to the final four a couple years ago; obviously not as exciting as the 11, but lower seeds can make it. Also, the home court advantage in the women’s tournament ensures you don’t have too many 1 seeds going down the first weekend.
I disagree that UCONN’s dominance is bad for the sport. It made the ND upset much more thrilling. I’ve never heard anybody ever say Alabama’s dominance is bad for college football. Bama football and UCONN basketball have the same number of National Championships in the past 9 seasons.
I wonder if people said that UCLA’s dominance was bad for men’s college basketball in the 1970s? Not being alive then, I wouldn’t know. But I’d imagine I would have simply found myself in awe of those teams, not thinking that they were bad for the sport.
“I’ve never heard anybody ever say Alabama’s dominance is bad for college football.”
https://www.si.com/college-football/video/2018/01/09/alabama-dominance-good-bad-college-football
It gets debated all the time. If Alabama makes the college playoff 11 straight times and wins titles 10/18 years, I would think it would be bad for football. It’s only good for football when Notre Dame does something like that 🙂
Ha well damn, apparently I’m just oblivious. That’s not even an old video, it’s from this year! What the hell.
I’m going to disagree, because I don’t think women’s basketball is the same as men’s basketball, at least in the eyes of your casual fan.
Without UCONN’s historic domination (and that of Tennessee before them), or the rivalry between major powers like UCONN and ND and Tenn, or without transcendently dominant players like Baylor’s Brittney Griner, no one would pay attention to Women’s BB. Yes, people want upsets and chaos in the men’s tournament, because that makes it fun even if you have no rooting interest. But we have that in MBB. If WBB was the same, it would be considered merely a less-athletic version of the same thing, and get lost in the shuffle. No one would pay more attention to it than they do volleyball or softball.
The dominance of UCONN or Tenn under summit give the average sports fan a story to follow. If any one of 20 teams had a realistic shot at the title, then ND beating UCONN would be a blip, even with as amazing a game as it was. It’d get maybe 30 seconds on SportsCenter in between opening day baseball highlights or whatever.
But beating the OMG UCONN that was undefeated every regular season since forever and has won X amount of titles and dominates everyone? THAT is a story. Even if UCONN wins, there’s the “can they top the 156 (or whatever it was) game winning streak they had?” “Is Geno or Pat Summit the greatest coach of all time?” “How great would we consider Muffet if Geno and Pat Summit didn’t overlap her tenure?!”
Without the dominance of a few amazing teams, the WBB tourney would be a footnote while everyone paid attention to the men’s tournament. Heck, EVEN WITH it, most fans don’t actually pay attention to it, they just note that UCONN is dominant and OMG someone beat them.
That makes a lot of sense. I don’t know if I totally buy it all the way but it’s a valid point.
No opinion on legacies.
I’m not an avid basketball guy. In fact I really don’t have a lot of interest in it unless our guys are doing good. I fought the last quarter of the UCONN game. That was a blast. Then I watched the last three quarters of the championship game and wrote them off at half time. Wow, that was a fun game. That was really special.
There’s a certainly a very strong case for her being the best basketball coach in ND history. It is tough to cross the lines to a different sport and make a comparison.
I would like to comment on the issue of whether the dominance of the top few teams in women’s college basketball renders the NCAA women’s tournament not as exciting as the men’s tournament (which is what several commentators on here have implied, at a minimum, if not stated it outright). In one respect, this is true as you rarely, if ever, have a Cinderella team in the women’s tournament, nor do you regularly see brackets get busted as frequently as occurs in the men’s tournament. The regional that Loyola came out of was a complete circus, and fun to watch, because of all the upsets.
Without opining on which setup is better, let me make one point with which I think you will have to agree. The women’s Final Four this year, which had all No. 1 seeds make it for only the fourth time (which indicates the dominance isn’t perfect), was likely the most exciting Final Four, men’s or women’s, in years. Both semifinal games went into OT. The National Championship game almost went into OT (thank you Arike, for saving my heart from further damage). Few would dispute that all three games in the women’s Final Four were tremendous.
By contrast, each of the men’s Final Four games was decided by double digits, and the National Championship game was likely over with about 7-8 minutes left in the game (and that is being generous).
Perhaps the Women’s Final Four’s excitement was the product of the fact that the four teams that made it were high quality, well-coached teams, that were pretty evenly matched, there were no Cinderellas or bracket busters, and the result was heart-pounding drama.
It’s a different perspective, but it has validity. It takes the drama out of the early rounds and packs it into the later rounds. I’m not saying it’s a better system. I’m just saying that, in terms of intensity, the women’s Final Four this year far outpaced the men’s in terms of watchability and fun (and I think I can say that without the worry that I am biased in favor of the team that ultimately won).
What do you think?
This will maybe get me some downvotes, but oh well: I am a bandwagon fan for sure, but I’m having trouble imagining voluntarily watching teams that are *worse* than ND/UConn/MSU unless it involved a blood relative. As exciting as the ends of both games were, the level of play makes it a tough watch. For somebody who doesn’t watch a ton of WBB, the first half of the championship game was a pretty brutal watch in terms of the level of play – e.g., people were literally dribbling the ball off their feet. Of course, it got very exciting and fun at the end.
Point being for the purposes of your question: for people like me, it’s definitely better for the game that it’s top-heavy, because when we do watch it’s more likely that we’ll see the game at the highest level among relatively evenly matched teams. Notwithstanding my feelings about the first half, the excitement of the end of both games makes me far more likely to want to try to watch the Irish ladies next year.
I think this is just the problem with college sports in general, though. You have a bunch of young people who aren’t particularly amazing at the sport they’re playing. In the men’s national championship, theoretically a game between two of the best teams in the country, one team shot 13% on 3s. They missed 20 of their 23 3s. That’s…not ideal. Somehow, that was only slightly worse than the first half of their previous game (which they won) when they shot 16% on 3s. Of course, their opponent for that game shot 10% from deep (and turned the ball over 17 times).
Oh, for sure – the men’s title game was unwatchable too.
I always enjoy watching the Wolverines lose. No Wolverine loss, in any sport or contest of any kind, is unwatchable.
I agree with MikeyB that college sports are frequently brutal watches in general. Men’s basketball is no different. Many entire games between ostensibly good teams are absolutely terrible.
But I do agree, as someone who probably watches significantly more women’s basketball, that a lot of games are an absolute slog. Half the teams in the ACC are horrible (relatively speaking) and have little to no shot of even keeping it to single digits against a team like ND.
Sure, the Final Four was probably the best ever, and it’s regularly exciting year-after-year. I even think in recent years, the Sweet 16 on has been more compelling on average just because I think the talent pool is improving incrementally and there is more to go around.
But there is still 80+% of the season that is just not interesting because it is either totally non-competitive or just not featuring good basketball. I think that’s a genuine problem. In men’s hoops, they are really trying to find ways to capture more attention throughout the season because tournament season sells but the rest of the season doesn’t to nearly the same degree. In women’s hoops, I think it’s an even bigger problem, and a great Final Four doesn’t cancel out that concern.
I don’t think there’s a “solution” per se, other than the gradual increase of talent, as more and more girls who have grown up entirely in the WNBA era are playing basketball year-round and competitively. Keep growing the talent pool, and I bet the next generation of women’s college hoops will be that much better, with more good, competitive teams to take on the likes of UConn, ND, Baylor, etc.
Sounds like you would call the ACC…a major disappointment.
i think Leahy has still got to be the most impressive. i mean, who else won a NC for ND while coaching at a different school?
Will ND give her a statue in front of the Joyce?
Yes, once she retires right?
Give her two, she’s short.
One for her, one for her heels?
Women’s basketball? Yawn. You’re just being politically correct. Most of the sportsfan world couldn’t even name her.
But they can name Rockne, Leahy, Ara, and Lou. Judging coaching women’s b-ball as being more impressive than successfully coaching ND football no matter how many championships over how many years is junk science, with respect.
Probably the worst comment in 18 Stripes history, with respect.
Also with respect, Kiwifan, I logged in just to downvote this… I presume you were being tongue in cheek though, so the downvote is in that case tongue in cheek