Huge congrats to Muffet. Never ever thought this would be the year that she’d win it all. Keep in mind she wasn’t able to with Diggins/McBride/Loyd/Turner/etc but she pulled it off with just 7 scholarship players and Mabrey playing point.
They also had an incredibly tough road to win it all. They had to beat:
-Texas A&M, a very good 4 seed who gave them a good run
-Oregon, the #2 seed who most predicted would beat Notre Dame. Game was in PNW too. Was down by 6 at the half.
-UCONN, the 14 point favorite and undefeated team. Clawed back from down 11 and down 8 in the 4th.
-Mississippi State, a 1 seed who went 37-2. ND was down 40-25 in the 2nd half and down by 5 in the last minute or so.
They did not play their best basketball today and yes, they did benefit big time from the no call on Mabrey, but Arike came up huge and ND simply made the plays down the stretch. Over the last year, the individual improvement we saw from each player (Arike, Mabrey, Shepard, Nelson and Westbeld) was remarkable. Huge congrats to ND and Muffet. Enjoy your championship.