Coach Muffet McGraw, the Karen and Kevin Keyes Family head women’s basketball coach at the University of Notre Dame, is an ideal heir to the Rockne legacy, a true champion who consistently achieves excellence with integrity, and has a major impact on the lives of her players, basketball, and women’s athletics in general.

Beginning her 32nd season as Notre Dame head coach, Coach McGraw has guided her Fighting Irish to a record of 800-230, for a winning percentage of .777. Her overall record in 36 seasons as a head coach is 888-271 (.766). On Easter Sunday of 2018, the Irish won their second NCAA title under McGraw, defeating Mississippi State, 61-58, on Arike Ogunbowale’s last-second three-pointer.

Exactly 17 years earlier, McGraw led Notre Dame to its first national championship in women’s basketball, defeating Purdue, 68-66. She is just the sixth coach with multiple national titles in the sport. Coach McGraw is a three-time consensus National Coach of the Year, with eight trips to the Final Four and six NCAA Championship game appearances. Her list of achievements is seemingly endless.

A testament to the esteem in which Coach McGraw is held is the fact she is already an inductee in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, an honor she received in 2017. In 2011, she was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame.

The 2017-18 season became a unique challenge for Coach McGraw when her team lost four key players to season-ending knee injuries. “We just thought we were cursed,” said McGraw. “There must be someone out there sticking pins in a voodoo doll—it had to be something! But then it was just worrying about how we were going to finish the season with seven people. So winning wasn’t even part of the conversation initially. We were just hanging on by a thread and putting it together with duct tape and band aids.”

But the Irish kept churning, posted the biggest comeback victory in program history against Tennessee, and gained a share of the ACC title with a 29-2 regular season. When they arrived in Columbus for the NCAA Final Four, they were supported by a large group of former players. “It was fantastic—one of the best things about the entire tournament,” McGraw said.

The last-second victories over Connecticut and Mississippi State led to a lot of celebration: in Columbus, in South Bend, and across Irish Nation.

“I never felt like we needed to win another (NCAA title) to validate what we’ve done here,” McGraw said. “I think just getting to the Final Four is a tremendous accomplishment, and we went five years in a row. And to have gone eight times total now…(but) whenever I was in the arena pre-game, I would always look up at the 2001 banner and wonder if we were ever going to do it again because I wanted the team to experience it.”