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Notre Dame Women's Basketball Changing Recruiting Approach

Throughout her Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame career at Notre Dame, head coach Muffet McGraw has made a habit of excelling with significantly whittled down rosters.

Her first Final Four team in 1997 had only seven healthy players available during the Cinderella tournament run, so she suited up student manager Christy Grady for emergency purposes.

Two years ago en route to her second national title, four season-ending ACL injuries once again left the Irish with seven healthy players, and usually only six played.

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The current Notre Dame bench, from third to the right, Anaya Peoples (shoulder surgery), Abby Prohaska (pulmonary embolism) and former walk-on Kaitin Cole.
The current Notre Dame bench, from third to the right, Anaya Peoples (shoulder surgery), Abby Prohaska (pulmonary embolism) and former walk-on Kaitin Cole. (Mike Miller)

This year, attrition has finally caught up via transfers, health or other unexpected defections that have left the Irish 9-14 overall and 4-7 in the ACC after last night’s 75-71 win at Wake Forest.

Currently the Irish are down to seven healthy scholarship players again — only because former walk-on and senior Katie Cole (who scored a career high six points at Wake Forest) was put on scholarship.

Whereas the NCAA restricts men’s basketball to 13 scholarships, the women get 15.

McGraw has never felt the need to go beyond 11 — two full teams, plus one in case of injury — especially when most game rotations have seven or eight players.

But the combination of injuries and especially the transfer portal — which saw reportedly and approximately 500 women basketball players use it last year, including former Irish Danielle Patterson (Indiana) and Jordan Nixon (Texas A&M) — leaves her little choice.

“We’re looking to get 15,” she said of the recruiting strategy in the coming years. “We don’t want to be in a situation where we’ve been the past few years where you just never know what’s going to happen at the end of the year. There are injuries, there are kids that transfer — we’ve got to be prepared to have a full roster.

“There are too many good players out there for us to look and say we only want to [give] one or two scholarships.”

Ideally, this year's Notre Dame roster would have included three former national players of the year from different outlets — seniors Jackie Young (Naismith) and Erin Boley (Gatorade), and fifth-year senior point guard Ali Patberg (MaxPreps), who sat out her freshman season at Notre Dame with a torn ACL.

Instead, Young turned pro after her junior year and became the No. 1 overall pick in the WNBA, Boley transferred to Oregon after her freshman season (currently averaging 8.3 points per game) and Patberg, who transferred after her sophomore year, is now leading the Indiana Hoosiers in scoring (13.8 per game) and assists (5.4).

In addition to the aforementioned duo of Patterson and Nixon departing, the Irish this year have lost sophomore guard Abby Prohaska (pulmonary embolism) and stellar freshman Anaya Peoples (shoulder surgery). They also played nearly the first two months without junior center Mikki Vaughn (knee injury).

The 2018 national champs did not have a true point guard after Patberg transferred and Lili Thompson and Mychal Johnson suffered ACL tears. This year the Irish had to land reserve graduate transfer Marta Sniezek from Stanford to avoid not having a true point guard a third year in a row.

McGraw has prided herself on loyalty, but today’s “free agency” realities in the college game require adjustment.

“I’ve always been cognizant that I don’t want to recruit over somebody,” she said. “If I recruit you to come in and play, I want you to play. I don’t want to recruit somebody that is in the same position as you are, especially at the point.

“But the way we’ve been at the point guard lately, we need to get one every year, and we’re looking at more combo guards so they can play together. But we definitely need to have a bigger roster.

“I think we’ve learned. It’s unfortunate. It’s a shame all the transfers that are going on across the country that you have to kind of change your philosophy, because you just don’t know (what will happen).”

This past November the Irish staff signed a rare five-woman class for the 2020 recruiting cycle. If current graduate student Destinee Walker — whose 24 points (22 in the second half) led the win over Wake Forest last night — returns for a sixth season next year (for which she is eligible), the Irish will have 12 players on scholarship, provided more transfers don’t occur.

Everyone but Walker would still have eligibility after 2020-21, so with three or four more recruits in the 2021 cycle, Notre Dame actually could get to the maximum 15 limit.

In reality, 12 might be a more ideal number because 15 is only going to perpetuate the cycle of transfers.

Last year South Carolina, which won the 2017 national title, lost four players (two of them starters) to transfer in a 24-hour period after also signing the nation’s No. 1 class.

“Kids transfer because they are not playing, so we want to bring in more players — which means more kids are going to transfer because they’re not going to be playing,” McGraw said. “It’s really just a bad situation.”

Because Notre Dame generally recruits at an extremely high level — players ranked often in the top- 5-25 range, with the 2020 group having four among the top 50 —balancing star power with minutes played can also become a delicate matter.

“Most kids ranked in the top 50 see themselves as being able to come in and contribute right away,” McGraw said. “That’s how we look at it as well. When you look at the top players, they just want to win, so they want to play with good players.

“It used to be they wanted to be the one, they wanted to stand out and be the only one. Now they want to be one of many good players on the team.”

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