Notre Dame women’s basketball sets date for Muffet McGraw statue unveiling
When you win national championships at Notre Dame, you get immortalized in the form of a statue. That’s long been the unwritten rule for the Fighting Irish football program.
Now, it pertains to women’s basketball.
Former Notre Dame head coach Muffet McGraw will have her statue unveiled before the Irish take on Purdue Purcell Pavilion on Dec. 17. Tipoff is set for 12 p.m. ET. The statue will go up outside the main entrance to the Joyce Center on the south side of the arena.
McGraw, 67, won two national titles as the head coach in South Bend, one in 2001 and another in 2018. Longevity was the name of McGraw’s game. Her tenure spanned 33 seasons from 1987 to 2020. In that lengthy timeframe, Notre Dame won 848 games and held onto a streak of 24 consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances. There were nine trips to the Final Four mixed into that run.
The 13th female coach to ever be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, McGraw’s 936 career victories ranks seventh all-time on the women’s side. She was the fourth-fastest coach in NCAA women’s basketball history to reach 900. She had 174 wins over ranked opponents and led the Irish to 14 regular season conference championships and 11 conference tournament titles.
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Current Notre Dame head coach Niele Ivey, of course, is a disciple of McGraw. Ivey was Notre Dame’s starting point guard on the 2001 national title team. She served as an assistant on McGraw’s coaching staff from 2007-19 before taking over for McGraw as head coach in 2020.
Notre Dame drops one spot in AP Top 25
Notre Dame is 3-0 since losing the season opener to South Carolina on Nov. 6, but the Irish still dropped one spot in the most recent edition of the Associated Press Poll that was released Monday afternoon. The Irish (3-1) check in at No. 17 ahead of a week consisting of a home game against Chicago State on Tuesday and a road matchup in Muncie, Ind., against Ball State.
Here is a look at the entire AP Top 25.
- South Carolina (3-0)
- UCLA (4-0)
- Colorado (4-0)
- Stanford (4-0)
- Iowa (4-1)
- UConn (3-1)
- LSU (4-1)
- USC (3-0)
- Virginia Tech (2-1)
- Utah (4-1)
- NC State (4-0)
- Texas (4-0)
- Florida State (4-0)
- Baylor (3-0)
- Ohio State (2-1)
- Kansas State (4-0)
- Notre Dame (3-1)
- North Carolina (4-0)
- Tennessee (3-1)
- Louisville (4-0)
- Indiana (3-1)
- Oklahoma (5-0)
- Washington State (5-0)
- Ole Miss (4-1)
- Mississippi State (5-0)
