Notre Dame Legends Immortalized
In athletics there will always be memorable games, special seasons and defining events or careers.
And then there are also the colossal, epic outcomes — almost spiritual in a sense — that leave you breathless and become immortalized for generations to come. This weekend was one of them at Notre Dame.
One hundred years from now in 2118, the 2018 NCAA Tournament in women’s basketball will still be referenced or highlighted in Fighting Irish athletics lore with a reflection similar to today when the seminal event on Nov. 1, 1913 had Notre Dame making a remarkable breakthrough in its football roots with a stunning 35-13 victory at superpower Army (or even a 1909 victory at Michigan).
Those events were something we don’t have film clips of, or maybe we can’t quite identify with today. Yet through lore passed down, we know they were watershed moments in the program’s heritage.
There are others that Notre Dame football fans grew up with in the 50 years after 1909 or 1913: One For The Gipper at Army in 1928, the mind-boggling comeback at Ohio State in 1935 (voted the greatest college football game during the sport’s 100-year anniversary in 1969), or snapping Oklahoma’s NCAA-record 47-game winning streak.
But guess what? After each of those three games, Notre Dame lost at home the next week. The emotional euphoria was virtually impossible to carry over seven days later. So we highlight more the “Golden Years” from 1946-49 as the standard of sustained, unparalleled excellence in the football program’s history.
In my own lifetime (starting in 1962), the two most epic football events in my memory vault were one-point wins over No. 1 Alabama in the 1973 Sugar Bowl (24-23) and No. 1 Miami (31-30) during the 1988 regular season. The first clinched a national title, and the second restored faded glory while on the way to another finish at the summit.
There are many others that fall in the memorable moments — 1973 and 1977 versus USC, 1978-79 Cotton Bowls, 1993 Florida State, etc., — but the aforementioned two were titanic in terms of impact and start-to-finish pulsating action with so much on the line, while also in an underdog role.
Of course, the 1964 Resurrection from 2-7 to a 9-0 start under first-year coach Ara Parseghian qualifies — but as a two-year-old I couldn’t quite yet embed it into the memory bank.
In men’s basketball, there have been two others that fell into the colossal category: One was Jan. 19, 1974, when Notre Dame moved to No. 1 for the first time ever in a poll while snapping UCLA’s NCAA-record 88-game winning streak and after trailing 70-59 with 3:32 left (and no shot clock or three-point line). That situation could have been set up 10,000 times, and in 9,999 the Irish would have lost. On that historic day, it didn’t (71-70).
Making it more impactful to the "what tho' the odds" identity of the school was just two years earlier Notre Dame finished 6-20, including losses such as 114-56 to UCLA and 94-29 at Indiana.
The other was March 2015 when the Fighting Irish won the ACC Tournament — something I never anticipated in my lifetime — on Tobacco Road while defeating Miami and then shocking superpowers Duke and North Carolina on consecutive nights.
Just a year earlier Notre Dame was 14-16 and reeling internally, but 12 months later it was a champion and then parlayed that into becoming the second Irish squad ever to win three consecutive games in the NCAA Tournament.
In hockey, which will be vying for its own national title later this week, I would be remiss not to include the 2006-07 unit that had the best record in the sport (32-7-3) under second-year head coach Jeff Jackson — two years after it finished with the worst (5-27-6).
In women’s basketball, the 2001 national title under Muffet McGraw was the ultimate breakthrough, but the “what tho’ the odds” spirit never shone brighter than this year after losing two former top recruits to transfer, four others to ACL tears and enduring a plethora of broken noses, sprained ankles, blackened eyes, a 33-point defeat…
This was a team that even become somewhat fearful of holding practice while subconsciously fearing the next jinxed or cursed moment.
Getting to the Final Four was enough in itself to be classified as one of the most remarkable achievements in the program’s history. But then to vanquish two teams that combined for a 73-1 record — 36-0 and No. 1 UConn with its dynasty, and 37-1 Mississippi State — after trailing by 11 and 15 points, respectively, the latter the biggest comeback victory in championship game history, was beyond the icing.
Enhancing it were what will now be forever recorded as the two most famous back-to-back game-winning baskets, by Arike Ogunbowale, not merely at Notre Dame but in the NCAA Tournament overall.
There is good, there is better and then there is best.
Sometimes there is even the colossal. This weekend manifested it.
When You Least Expect It…
One of the fun aspects of athletics is emerging or ascending when you least expect it.
Examples include the 1973 and 1988 national titles in football when the operation was supposedly at least “a year away” while coming off 40-6 and 35-10 bowl losses. Or even the 2012 campaign when the Irish finished 12-0 the year after 8-5 and a school record-tying five straight seasons with at least five losses — plus losing first-round picks Michael Floyd and Harrison Smith, and super frosh Aaron Lynch, among others.
This wasn’t supposed to be “The Year” for the Notre Dame women’s basketball team. Two transfers, four ACL tears … just get people back healthy next year and that will be the time to make the run.
The expectations will be through the roof next season — as they were in 2015-16 when the Irish were preseason No. 1 but didn’t quite know how to deal with it.
It has to be especially gratifying for McGraw, whose recent teams were perennial runners-up, sort of like the Buffalo Bills from 1990-93, the Los Angeles Lakers going 0-8 in the NBA Finals from 1959-70, or the Brooklyn Dodgers 0-4 in the World Series from 1941-53.
The frustration was so deep.
• In 2011 the Irish shocked the nation by defeating Pat Summit’s Tennessee Volunteers for the first time in 21 tries, followed by a Final Four victory over No. 1 UConn — yet lost to Texas A&M in the championship tilt.
• In 2012 Notre Dame had to face the 40-0 buzz saw of Baylor with Brittney Griner.
• In 2013 Notre Dame was 3-0 against UConn before losing to the Huskies in the Final Four. Where was the justice in that?
• In 2014, star center Natalie Achonwa tore her ACL late in the Elite Eight win over Baylor, and the 37-0 Irish had to play shorthanded in the title game versus UConn while falling to defeat.
• The UConn dynasty continued with a 63-53 title game win over the Irish in 2015.
• Last year the Irish were peaking in March and primed for a second national title — until All-American post player Brianna Turner, similar to Achonwa, tore her ACL in the NCAA Tournament. How cursed is this program, many wondered?
So when McGraw was asked last year if there was anything else on her basketball “bucket list” after getting inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, she was curt.
“There’s a lot left to do, let’s not even go there,” she replied. “Every year I feel like it’s a disappointment — the last two years especially.”
When you least expected it …
Inevitably, she will be the first women’s coach at Notre Dame to have a statue unveiled down the line.
Her typical crouched position on the sideline with a hand on her chin in Rodin’s “The Thinker” pose would seem apropos.
History Doesn’t Repeat
Prior to the victory over Mississippi State, it felt like history would repeat from the 2011 loss to Texas A&M in the title game.
Besides both Irish teams upsetting top-ranked UConn in the semifinal, MSU head coach Vic Schaefer was the associate head coach for the Aggies in 2011.
In that 2011 game, the Irish trailed only 70-68 when A&M’s Tyra White hit a desperate three-point shot as the shot clock buzzer sounded to put the Aggies ahead 73-68 with 1:07 left.
“That was the knife in my heart, that was the game,” McGraw said back then.
Against MSU, the Bulldogs were up 55-53 when Roshunda Johnson also drilled a trey at the 1:58 mark just as the shot clock buzzer sounded for another five-point cushion at 58-53.
Similar back-breaking three-point shot, similar five-point lead in the closing two minutes … different outcome.
That is how legends get immortalized.
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