How a Notre Dame women’s basketball coach has a unique tie to NCAA Tournament opponent Oklahoma

Coquese Washington‘s decision to say yes was as much of a no-brainer as Niele Ivey’s choice to call her.

Ivey had just been hired to replace the legendary Muffet McGraw as the Notre Dame women’s basketball coach in April 2020. Her first order of business was to assemble an assistant coaching staff. It made sense to retain Carol Owens and Michaela Mabrey. The former worked for McGraw for two decades. The latter, like Ivey, played for McGraw at Notre Dame then joined her on the bench shortly thereafter.

When Beth Cunningham, also a former Notre Dame player turned Fighting Irish assistant, departed to unite with Kara Lawson at Duke, it left an opening on Ivey’s staff. She didn’t hesitate to put an offer on the table for Washington, another former Notre Dame player who became a McGraw coaching disciple.

“When she called, I didn’t expect the conversation to go in that direction,” Washington told BlueandGold.com. “Niele and I had always been in touch since I first coached her, but I wasn’t expecting her to call and ask me to come back and coach. I thought it was another one of those, ‘All right, how do I do this?’ calls. But she said, ‘I want you to come with me.’

“I was caught off guard, but I knew I had to go with her.”

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Washington spent eight seasons as a Notre Dame assistant from 1999-2007. She helped win the program’s first national championship in 2001, when Ivey was the team’s starting point guard. Her career took her elsewhere — Penn State as a head coach from 2007-19 and Oklahoma as an assistant from 2019-20 — but it was always going to make sense for her to return home.

Ivey gave her the chance. Washington jumped on it.

“She’s like my little sister. She’s like family,” Washington said of Ivey. “When family calls and asks you to come home, it didn’t take long for me to go, ‘All right. We’re going to do this.'”

Fun times hanging in Indy at the Wings-Fever game! Gotta support our Irish in the WNBA!💚🍀 pic.twitter.com/EV5DVkjXwd

— Coquese Washington (@CoqueseWashing) June 25, 2021

Now, here’s Washington dressed in blue and gold going against the players she used to coach in crimson and cream. Returning to the staff at her alma mater and working with someone she recruited and coached is all Washington could have asked for. But it was still difficult to say goodbye to a program she poured everything into for two years.

Now it’s her job to knock that program out of the NCAA Tournament.

“The University of Oklahoma is a great school,” Washington said. “The athletic department is great. It’s a great place to work. There is great leadership there. It was really hard to leave the people and relationships I had built in a short time, but ultimately the allure of family and going back to my alma mater certainly held sway.”

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College athletics is a business. Coaches are loyal to one school at a time. But Washington is still human. So are the players she coached at Oklahoma. Relationships last a lifetime. It’s only been a couple years since Washington was unequivocally set on improving the careers of sharpshooting Sooners like Madi Williams and Taylor Robertson. Her livelihood was once predicated on them making shots. Now her stay in the tournament is dependent on them missing.

The outcome won’t change how either side feels about the other, though.

“It’ll be really cool to go against her,” Robertson said. “It was really fun when she was here. She was fun to be around. She was a really good coach.”

“It was cool having her around and having the insight she brought along with her high energy,” Williams added. “She was just fun. I got a chance to talk to her [Saturday], and we just embraced each other.”

Relationships. They matter. Even in the heat of battle.

Washington’s personable nature was a driving factor in Ivey being so adamant in adding her to the staff.

“I needed loyalty,” Ivey said. “I needed family around me. Somebody that knows me well and knows Notre Dame extremely well. I didn’t think I was going to get her. I worked really hard to try to bring her from obviously a great university.”

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Ivey said Washington taught her the game. She called Washington her mentor. A WNBA champion as a player with the Houston Comets, Washington has been in the trenches. She was a player on the first Notre Dame team to ever reach the NCAA Tournament in 1992. That experience made her approachable for Robertson and Williams and a more than capable teacher for current Irish players like sophomore forward Maddy Westbeld and freshman combo guard Sonia Citron.

“I love having her as a coach,” Citron said. “I’ve really built a strong bond with her. She just knows so much about the game. She’s really been teaching me a lot. And she’s also just really encouraging. She’s going to get on you to make you better, but at the same time you know that she has your back and she’s going to be there for you.”

“I’ve built a really strong bond with her,” Westbeld added. “That’s my dog. I’m really, really close with her. She knows little things about the game that you don’t pick up even yourself watching film or even with the team. She just has a whole different perspective, and she’s extremely analytical and just brings a different side of the game that you don’t pick up just watching. She’s awesome.”

Washington said it has been “surreal” coaching those two in an arena she used to coach so many others. Muscle memory nearly took her to the coach’s offices at the Lloyd Noble Center. Monday night is all about Notre Dame, though. It’s all about continuing the progression of the program under the coach who called her almost exactly two years ago.

“It’s been wonderful being with her and watching her grow as a head coach and put her stamp on the program and continue the success she enjoyed as a player and assistant coach,” Washington said. “The success she’s enjoying now as a head coach, it’s neat to be a part of it with her.”