As we enter March Madness and the greatest time to be alive as college basketball fans, many of the conversations we have with our friends and fellow fans revolve around legends of the game. The University of Notre Dame is no stranger to being the home of a legendary sports figure. In fact, Notre Dame commissions bronze statues of those figures to proudly display on it picturesque South Bend campus. And that’s where you’ll find former Notre Dame women’s basketball coach, Muffet McGraw every day of the week.
In December of 2023, the university unveiled Muffet McGraw’s statue outside of Purcell Pavilion. At Notre Dame, these statues are reserved for only the most legendary of coaches with the main, requirement being that they brought home a national championship. In McGraw’s case, she brought home TWO national championships.
While the national championship is the “goal” every year, we all understand it’s everything a coach accomplishes in the month of March that sets them apart as a game changer. Muffet built the Notre Dame women’s basketball program in the month of March, but it did take her 9 years to get to the Final Four for the first time with Notre Dame in 1997. It was at that point which Notre Dame began a storied postseason run for more than two decades.
As the Irish navigated four different conferences during McGraw’s tenure, she won 14 regular season conference championships (5 MCC, 3 Big East, 6 ACC) and 11 conference tournament (5 MCC, 1 Big East, and 5 ACC).
From 1995-2019, McGraw led the Irish to 24 straight NCAA Tournament appearances, 9 Final Four’s, 5 national runner-ups, and 2 national championships.
And those are just the numbers — but she was more than just an accumulator of trophies and plaques. Muffet McGraw was an icon, and looked like an icon too. McGraw’s teams won relentlessly, and she paced the court in the most stylish clothes with the grace of a runway model while commanding her players like a battlefield general.
McGraw was also a very outspoken advocate for women’s rights and was a firm believer that a women’s basketball team should be coached by a group of coaches that were ALL women. She carved her own path as a coach, and became one of the greatest of all-time. She was an absolute game changer in the sport, and again… it’s because of her dominance in the month of March.
