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1997 – 2000
The 1998 run: The 1997–98 team reached the Sweet Sixteen the hard way, winning at top-seeded Texas Tech in Lubbock before losing to Louisiana Tech. Its center was a freshman from Macy, Indiana, named Ruth Riley, who on January 30, 1998, scored 41 points against Providence — the school's single-game scoring record, which stood until the Hidalgo years approached it a quarter-century later.
The holding seasons: The 1998–99 team lost in the tournament's second round; the 1999–2000 team went 27–5 and reached the Sweet Sixteen, losing to Texas Tech. Those seasons read quietly in the file, and they were not quiet in the building: the Irish of Riley's junior year were a top-ten team with a senior core — Riley, Ivey, Kelly Siemon and Meaghan Leahy among them — aimed at one specific spring.
The streak begins: One appliance of the era deserves its line here rather than in the apparatus: on November 15, 1996, the Iowa win had announced the program's arrival among the ranked; by the end of the decade the ranking was a standing condition. The university's polls history records 234 consecutive weeks in the Associated Press poll from November 4, 2007, to November 18, 2019 — a twelve-year unbroken presence that began in the decade after this one and belongs to the McGraw era's middle age.
Sources:
- University record book, NCAA tournament history and record lists — the 1998 and 2000 Sweet Sixteen runs; Riley's 41-point game of January 30, 1998; the 234-week ranked streak, 2007–2019.
- University media guide, year-by-year results — the 1997–2000 seasons and their records.