McGraw can exhale after Notre Dame earns spot in final

TAMPA, Fla. - Notre Dame's players practically bounded to the podium inside Amalie Arena, still full of adrenaline, their energy matching the wattage of the smile on Muffet McGraw's face. Yes, McGraw has a national title and is coaching at her fifth straight Final Four.

This one will stay with her.

"This is pretty high up there - it's definitely in the top 10," McGraw said later in Notre Dame's locker room, still sounding a little giddy after the Irish had survived a street fight with South Carolina, shoving into Tuesday's NCAA title game, 66-65.

This night was so much about grit and survival that it could have been played in some rec center in the hometown of the two Philly area-raised coaches. It was decided after an offensive rebound, on a shot by an unexpected hero, scoring her only points of the night.

These were no rec center stakes, of course. Notre Dame's star guard Jewell Loyd said her own heart broke for her friend Tiffany Mitchell, the Gamecocks all-American, who searched desperately for an opening to hit a game-winner in the final seconds but was left sobbing on the court.

Taking in the women's college basketball landscape, the Connecticut Huskies are Mount UConn, of course, with one of the highest peaks in the history of college sports. But the Irish are the rival - the program that also has established a base camp up above the clouds, replacing Tennessee as UConn's chief foil, even to the point of the two coaches with their own common Philly ties rubbing each other the wrong way.

Did you even realize Notre Dame is in its fifth straight Final Four, into the national title game for the fourth time in that span? And don't think the edge always goes to Geno Auriemma. The Irish won seven of eight meetings between the 2011 and 2013 national champs, including twice in the Final Four. It's no wonder McGraw mentioned in the locker room how she sometimes looks up at "one lonely banner," referring to her 2001 national title.

Sunday's game had maybe added significance for McGraw because Dawn Staley is on the rise at South Carolina, at her first Final Four as a coach. Score one for the Bishop Shanahan High and St. Joseph's grad, over the Dobbins Tech grad who had coached at Temple.

After her team converted just 7 of 16 free throws, and made less than that from 15 feet and out during the run of play, Staley said she wanted to the bad taste in her players' mouths to linger for awhile, that the returning players all take note of how hard it was both to get to this point and to win at this point. Staley put a lot of bite into the word "hard."

Even though Notre Dame trailed for less than a minute, pulling out to leads and seeing South Carolina fight back, McGraw explained how this still felt "a little bit like overcoming the odds. I feel like we were just shooting ourselves in the foot at every opportunity on offense and still managed to come away with a big play at the end."

Understand that Notre Dame lost three first-round WNBA draft choices from last year's team. The Irish coach is kind of the Tom Izzo of the women's game. Underestimate a McGraw team at your peril. But on day one of practice, did McGraw see this group getting into a national final?

"I did not," McGraw said, remembering that she told her team that 40 percent of their points and 40 percent of their rebounds and 40 percent of their assists were gone. Not a total gutting, but she said, "We really were a very different team, very young team. We did not have - we didn't know who the leader was going to be."

She talked about how her team struggled early with communication, "with a lot of little things. And I thought the staff tried to keep it simple. We tried not to overwhelm them."

The job Sunday obviously was to try to neutralize the inside play that South Carolina thrives on. "We went triangle and two, and box and one, we went 1-2-2. Played a couple of possessions of man-to-man, throwing everything but the kitchen sink at them trying to figure out a way to stop them," McGraw said.

Out on the court, Mount UConn had taken a lead on Maryland in the second semifinal.

"I'm just glad we played the earlier game so I can get a little rest," McGraw said.