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2019 – 2020
The last season: The 2019–20 team, rebuilt from the drafted five, went 13–18 — McGraw's only losing season at Notre Dame — and the year ended in suspension: the 2020 NCAA tournament was cancelled in the COVID spring, which is why the program's run of twenty-four consecutive tournament appearances (1996–2019) ends at 2019 rather than at a loss.
April 22, 2020: McGraw announced her retirement. About sixteen minutes later, Notre Dame announced her successor: Niele Ivey, the fourth head coach in the program's history. Athletic director Jack Swarbrick said afterward that the succession had been planned for roughly two years — Ivey's season away, as an assistant coach with the Memphis Grizzlies of the NBA in 2019–20, had been part of the preparation rather than a departure.
Ivey the player: Ivey, of St. Louis, had played at Notre Dame from 1996 to 2001 — arriving in the first Final Four season and leaving in the championship one. She tore a knee ligament five games into her freshman year and took a fifth season of eligibility; in it, 2000–01, she was a third-team Associated Press All-American (the first Notre Dame point guard so honored), won the Frances Pomeroy Naismith Award, made the Final Four all-tournament team, and set the school's single-season assists record of 247, which the record book notes still stands second in program history. The Fever drafted her in the second round in 2001; she played four years for Indiana and a fifth season, 2005, split between Detroit and Phoenix.
Ivey the assistant: After two seasons on Xavier's staff she joined McGraw's in 2007, became associate head coach in the summer of 2015, was the inaugural WBCA Division I national assistant coach of the year in 2016, entered Notre Dame's Ring of Honor in 2017, and spent 2019–20 with Memphis — the ninth woman to coach in the NBA. She is the common link to all nine of Notre Dame's Final Fours: two as a player (1997, 2001) and seven as an assistant coach. The record book's player sketch phrases the count as "two as player, six as coach" — a line written before the 2019 Final Four closed the count at nine — and the full count is printed here.
Sources:
- University releases, April 22–23, 2020 — the retirement and the succession announcement; Swarbrick's account of the two-year plan.
- University record book — Ivey's player sketch (the awards, the 247 assists, the draft and WNBA seasons, the Xavier and Memphis stops, the Ring of Honor, the Final Four link as the book phrases it); the 2019–20 season and the cancelled tournament.