Remember back when ND turned the tide against UConn? McGraw built that come back by developing players like Novosel, Mallory, McBride, Peters, Achonwa, and Cable. The high rated players like Diggins, Loyd, Turner, and Ogunbowale definitely helped her program stay up there, but her player development is second to only Geno.
I think ND can go back to its roots by screening, cutting, and back doors that made them so fun to watch in 10-11 and 11-12.
I think McGraw likes being the underdog. Her team isn't going to make a FF team this year, but most of the scholarship players will be back next year and they are all young. They'll be good next year. This year, top 10 is iffy. Next year they will be top 10. McGraw is a HOF coach. Underestimate her at your own peril
Good post. I agree - I tend to think ND is recruiting at a similar level as recent years except that for a while ND had a fortunate streak of landing elite talents who happened to fit into their typical recruiting profile.
I've wrote about this before but ND recruits from the Midwest, Great Lakes and east coast cities. Basically that amounts to Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, NYC, and maybe Northern Virginia/DC area. That's where the ND brand is strongest. If religion is important to the player or the player has attended religious schools, that obviously helps.
ND had Skylar Diggins from their own backyard followed by:
McBride ("only" ranked #20 by ESPN but outperformed that, from an all-girls Catholic school in PA)
Loyd (from Chicago and the kind of person that tweets bible verses)
Reimer (from Indiana, she under-performed her rankings but was considered an elite recruit)
Turner (this is the exception to the rule - the only elite recruit ND has got out of the deep south in this run)
Ogunbowale (from all-girls Catholic school in Wisconsin)
Young (from Indiana)
And then Shepard was a bit of luck after her dream of playing for the home-town team turned sour. (Curiously, Caitlin Clark played AAU with one of Shepard's younger siblings - so I guess she's aware of the case against trying to be the hometown hero).
Scan the 2017 and 2018 rankings for someone who fits those geographical parameters. 2017 all you have is Sidney Cooks (who none of the blue bloods recruited despite her high ESPN rankings) and Dana Evans. 2018 the only person before Katlyn Gilbert that fits is Emily Engstler out of NY.
The map was much friendlier in 2019 and ND got two top-20 recruits in Peoples and Brunelle.
In 2020, Campbell and Marshall fit squarely in the geographical profile. Hayes is an intriguing outlier. And part of the reason I've been so interested in Caitlin Clark all along is that she fits the ND profile perfectly. From Iowa, which is at the west edge of ND's recruiting range but goes to a Catholic school and her faith seems important to her (at least based on news articles).
The one development that gives me pause is actually the emergence of Oregon and South Carolina as national recruiting powers who are getting elite talents out of ND's traditional strongholds.
It remains to be seen whether ND can keep consistently getting the elite players that fit the profile I've outlined with UConn being UConn and places like Oregon and South Carolina seemingly being the "it" schools at the moment.
Getting Clark would be an important step forward in that department.