Muffet McGraw Is Ready For The Next Challenge After 33 Years At Notre Dame

These past six weeks of social distancing gave Muffet McGraw plenty of time to think. 

About basketball. About her willingness to keep coaching after 33 years, nine Final Fours and two national championships at Notre Dame. About what’s truly important at this stage of her life. 

In the end, all that downtime left McGraw more certain than ever that she was ready for a new challenge. 

“This was a great opportunity for me to sit back and see what’s life without basketball going to look like,” McGraw said Wednesday on a video news conference. “I thought it looked really good. I felt really good about the solitude.” 

At 64 and with 936 career wins, including five seasons at Lehigh, McGraw has nothing left to prove in the basketball realm. She thinks highly of the WNBA, where Commissioner Cathy Engelbert is one of her many ex-players to make their mark in the professional world, but McGraw is hanging up her whistle. 

“I’m ready to move away from basketball,” she said. ‘I’ve done it for over 40 years now, and I’m looking forward to doing something else.”

A staunch and outspoken advocate for women’s equality, McGraw plans to stay visible in that arena. But when asked about a possible political future, she laughed and said she’s “a little too honest for politics.” 

Social activism is another matter. And she will remain on staff at Notre Dame to handle special projects for athletic director Jack Swarbrick and to help mentor other coaches, including her handpicked successor, Niele Ivey. 

A former championship point guard and longtime assistant for the Fighting Irish, Ivey is 42 and coming off a truncated-but-enlightening season as the ninth full-time female assistant in the NBA. 

She had a key role with the Memphis Grizzlies and a front-row seat for the nightly sorcery of Ja Morant, frontrunner for rookie of the year. 

Moving back to South Bend leaves her a two-hour drive from her son Jaden, a four-star basketball recruit who signed to play guard at Purdue. 

McGraw lauded Ivey’s charisma and said she has both the smile to light up a room and the intensity to focus a team when things turn serious. 

No one in the women’s game has ever had more intensity than McGraw, who admittedly struggled to stay in the moment and enjoy the good times. Mentally, she was always jumping ahead to the next challenge, the next big decision. 

That’s how a program goes eight seasons while losing just 23 times — total — as McGraw’s Irish did from 2011-19. Her final decade on the sideline included six trips to the national title game. 

After narrowly missing in a repeat title bid and sending all five starters to the WNBA, McGraw suffered through a 13-18 finale that marked just her second losing season out of 38 as a head coach. 

She said she would miss the high-stakes rivalry with UConn and its legendary coach Geno Auriemma, but there are other things about the modern game she won’t miss. 

“I’m not happy with where the women’s game is going right now,” McGraw said. 

She mentioned the transfer portal — “kids making commitments and not honoring them for four years” — and the “negativity of recruiting,” which has only increased along with the popularity of the women’s game. 

“You saw what happened on the men’s side with the money and people paying players,” she said. “We don’t have that kind of money on the women’s side but eventually we’re going to get to things like that. I think it’s happening in small ways right now. This break has been a great opportunity for us to look at recruiting and say, ‘Is this where we want our game to go?’

All of those factors played into her decision, even though ideally she would be handing Ivey a ready-made winner instead of a youthful, unproven group. An extended period of reflection convinced McGraw it was time. 

“I think people were wondering: Was I climbing the walls? What was I doing at home? Was I driving (husband) Matt crazy?” McGraw said. “We’ve really enjoyed this time. It gave me a great chance to reflect and see what’s really important.”

Amid a global pandemic, there are no guarantees about anything, sports or otherwise. 

“Things like this happen and you know tomorrow is promised to no one,” McGraw said  “What is your life going to look like down the road? We want to continue to enjoy it. I’m excited about knowing I can handle not having basketball in my life.”

Mike Berardino is a freelance writer based in South Bend, Ind. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.