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1988 – 1995
The league: Notre Dame joined the Midwestern Collegiate Conference in 1988 and promptly ran it. The Irish won the conference's regular-season championship in 1989, 1990, 1991, 1994 and 1995 — the 1990 team going 16–0 in league play — and its tournament in 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992 and 1994, ten conference crowns in seven seasons. The programs Notre Dame measured itself against in those years — Dayton, Detroit, Butler, Xavier, Loyola of Chicago, Saint Louis, La Salle, Duquesne at the end — were the mid-major world the program was about to leave.
The NWIT ceiling: The conference's tournament title did not at first carry an automatic NCAA bid of consequence, and Notre Dame's postseason ceiling in the league's first years was the NWIT, where the Irish finished seventh in 1989 and eighth in 1991 — Karen Robinson making the all-tournament team in 1991. Robinson, the point guard of those teams, scored 1,590 points across her career, a total that still stands in the program's all-time top fifteen. In 1995, the last MCC season, the Irish went back to the NWIT and finished third, Katryna Gaither making the all-tournament team — the fourth NWIT appearance in the program's history, after 1986, 1989 and 1991.
The first ranking: On December 31, 1990, midway through the 1990–91 season, Notre Dame appeared in the Associated Press poll at No. 25 — the first national ranking in the program's history. It is the small fact on which the rest of this section turns: within ten seasons the program would be ranked first.
Sources:
- University media guide and record book — the MCC regular-season titles (1989, 1990, 1991, 1994, 1995) and tournament titles (1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1994); the NWIT finishes and all-tournament honors (1989, 1991, 1995; the 1986 appearance in the DiStanislao entry).
- University record book — the polls history (first ranking, December 31, 1990, No. 25); the career scoring list (Robinson, 1,590).