In a little less than a week's time, Notre Dame women's basketball head coach Muffet McGraw has made a clean sweep of the nation's top coaching awards for the second consecutive season, picking up two more major honors on Monday when she was selected as this year's recipient of the Pat Summitt Trophy (presented by the Women's Basketball Coaches Association) and the Naismith Women's College Coach of the Year award, as chosen by the Atlanta Tipoff Club and its National Voting Academy.
On Saturday, McGraw was selected as the Associated Press Division I Women's National Coach of the Year, followed a day later by her designation as the United States Basketball Writers Association (USBWA) Women's National Coach of the Year.
With Monday's final two announcements, McGraw locks up consensus National Coach of the Year honors for the third time in her career, having also done so in 2001. What's more, she becomes the first NCAA Division I coach ever to sweep the four major national coaching awards three times in her career -- Connecticut's Geno Auriemma is the only other coach to sweep the "Big Four" honors more than once, doing so in 2008 and 2009.
McGraw is the third coach to earn the WBCA's newly-renamed Pat Summitt Trophy three times in her career, dating back to the award's inception in 1983. Only Auriemma (five) and the honor's namesake, Summitt (three) have earn the award as many as times as McGraw, who joins Auriemma as the only back-to-back recipients of the WBCA honor (he did it in 2008 and 2009).
In addition, McGraw is the third coach to earn the Naismith Award three times, joining a select group that includes Auriemma (six times) and Summitt (five times), the legendary former Tennessee coach who retired after the 2011-12 season, with McGraw the second coach to earn the award in consecutive seasons (Auriemma in 2008 and 2009.
