ND Women's BB '19 -'20 Season

[NDdomer2]

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Notre Dame just orchestrated the retirement of a legend and the hiring of its new coach in the span of about five tweets. With no leaks. No hiccups. Nothing. Someone get Jack Swarbrick a mic to drop. Epic, sir.</p>— Dana O'Neil (@DanaONeilWriter) <a href="https://twitter.com/DanaONeilWriter/status/1253033335447785472?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 22, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

this had to be in the works for quite a while to move so swiftly

 

[BGIF]

Draftkings.com

Draftkings.com

Muffet McGraw resigns at Notre Dame, Niele Ivey named as replacement
One of the greats in women’s basketball has decided to call it a career. We break down the news as Niele Ivey is set to replace Muffet McGraw as head coach of the Notre Dame women’s basketball team.
By Collin Sherwin@CollinSherwin Apr 22, 2020, 11:56am PDT


Muffet McGraw, the long-time head coach of Notre Dame women’s basketball, has decided to call it a career. The two-time national championship winner announced her retirement today.

“It has been my great honor to represent the University of Notre Dame these past 33 years, but the time has come for me to step down as your head basketball coach,” McGraw stated. “I want to thank Monk Malloy and Father Jenkins for giving me the opportunity to coach the game I love at a university I love. I have learned much about leadership from the many athletic directors with whom I have served, and in particular, I want to thank Jack Swarbrick for his unwavering support.

“I am grateful to have worked with the best assistant coaches in the business, and I have been blessed to coach so many phenomenal women.

“To the best fans in the country, it was my honor and privilege to play for you.”
McGraw won 936 games as a head coach, including 842 for the Fighting Irish. She started her career at Lehigh University after serving as both a player and assistant coach at St. Joe’s in Philadelphia.

McGraw was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2017. Her nine Final Four appearances ranks fifth all-time, and her 67 NCAA Tournament wins is fourth.

Niele Ivey, the long-time assistant to McGraw who had just left for the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies last August, has come back to replace her as head coach. Ivey won a national championship as a player with ND in 2001, and was part of the coaching staff for their 2018 title.

If anyone can keep an elite program at a high level for a sustained period of time, it’s someone that has been a part of what McGraw built in the Joyce Center. This should be as seamless a transition as is possible.

 

[SouthSideChiDomer]

Wow, that is a surprise. I felt like she was going to retire soon, but I definitely thought she would want to be back and leave on a better note. The program should be in good hands with Coach Ivey though.

How quickly do they get her statue up in front of the JACC?

 

[ab2cmiller]

Looking back at the records, Niele Ivey's presence had a huge effect on recruiting and performance on the court. The ascension to the Elite of the Elite corresponds with her joining the staff.

 

[BGIF]

Per ESPN

Per ESPN

McGraw will announce her retirement in a virtual news conference at 4:30 p.m. ET Wednesday.

 

[Irish#1]

Definitely a surprise.

 

[BGIF]

Definitely a surprise.

Yes and no.

She needed 67 wins for 1000 overall. In championship run years that's maybe two seasons, more likely three. Healthy, the material is there for a couple of 23 wins a season.

But the repeated emotional breakdowns at pressers I thought were telling. They weren't just about a game loss, a losing season, or the loss of consecutive milestones, like NCAAs, conference championships, etc. There was a bigger toll being taken.

 

[SouthSideChiDomer]

https://twitter.com/FightingIrish/status/1253057270134394880?s=20

Press conference links

https://www.pscp.tv/w/1lDxLgrRnrQJm

 

[BGIF]

McGraw PC


https://und.com/sports/wbball/

 

[BeauBenken]

Not the news I was expecting to see.


But this seems like the best hire that could be made after Muffet's retirement.

 

[BGIF]

Noie: Nobody better for this Notre Dame head coaching job than Niele Ivey
By Tom Noie South Bend Tribune 5 hrs ago

https://www.ndinsider.com/basketball/womens/noie-nobody-better-for-this-notre-dame-head-coaching-job-than-niele-ivey/article_9f1c5cc5-d8be-56b7-ad87-8dff84918d5f.html

There are home-run hires, and then there’s what Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick engineered without hanging so much as a “help wanted” sign outside the women’s basketball office.

Hiring Niele Ivey, a former Irish point guard, a former Irish associate head coach, Notre Dame in every sense, to replace Muffet McGraw, who retired Wednesday after 33 seasons, went beyond a home run.

This one was a bottom of the ninth, two strikes, two out, grand slam for Swarbrick.

...

Even when Ivey left for Memphis last summer, she kept her house just north of campus. You know, just in case the day came where she might need it again.

That day has arrived.

So has Ivey.

 

[BGIF]

Natalija Marshall Comments on McGraw Retirement and Ivey Hire.

Natalija Marshall Comments on McGraw Retirement and Ivey Hire.

Ivey's NBA Detour Leads Back To South Bend
By Chris Hansen & Brandon Clay
ProspectNation.com

https://prospectsnation.com/story/iveys-nba-detour-leads-back-south-bend

...

Ivey played at Notre Dame, including being on the floor for two of the program’s nine Final Four appearances. The other seven Ivey was on the bench as an assistant coach.

....


In the short term the Ivey hiring should empower the team to retain a roster littered with young talent, including the two standout freshmen from this season Anaya Peoples and Sam Brunelle.

In all likelihood, given the early recruiting process for elite players, Ivey had at least some interaction with the Irish four-player 2020 recruiting class, seeing that her NBA detour spanned only one year.

Coach McGraw announced her retirement to our team earlier today, and as we were briefly left in shock and sadness, that feeling transitioned to joy as she told us that Coach Ivey would be our new head coach. Not only am I extremely grateful to have known and built a relationship with Coach McGraw, but I am equally as grateful that I have the ability to be coached by another Notre Dame great. Coach Ivey is someone that I deeply respect and admire and there is not an ounce of regret or reconsideration in me for choosing Notre Dame. We lost a three time Naismith Coach of the Year in Coach McGraw, but we gained another extraordinary woman and coach with winning values and the willingness to do whatever it takes to win. I am extremely excited to learn and grow under Coach Ivey and her staff.​

Natalija Marshall, the No. 19 ranked player in 2020.

...

If Ivey can continue the success that she experienced as a player and assistant coach at Notre Dame she can put herself in rare space in the game. If she reaches the Final Four in the lead chair she can join Baylor’s Kim Mulkey in reaching that level of success in all three roles.

 

[BGIF]

Hayes On Board With Ivey Hire.

Hayes On Board With Ivey Hire.

Notre Dame signee Alasia Hayes not wavering after Muffet McGraw retirement
Cecil Joyce, Murfreesboro Daily News JournalPublished 6:15 p.m. CT April 22, 2020 | Updated 6:19 p.m. CT April 22, 2020

...

"It was really crazy," Hayes said. "On the Zoom call, Coach McGraw just calmly said, 'I'm going to retire.' You could see all the girls on the video call - our mouths completely dropped. We were all in shock.

"When we heard Coach Ivey was replacing her, we got super excited. She's like a younger version of Coach McGraw."

The players were also treated to a video call with Ivey later in the afternoon.

"She told us that not a lot is going to change," Hayes said. "She played for Coach McGraw and coached with her for so long. But she also said she's learned so much from the NBA. She's going to apply that knowledge. I'm excited she's going to be coaching us."

...

"I didn't choose Notre Dame for just one reason," Hayes said. "It's unfortunate I won't get to play for Coach McGraw, but she put us with somebody she could trust. I trust Coach McGraw, so I'm not really worried about (the coaching change)."

 

[BGIF]

Muffet McGraw won, evolved and exited Notre Dame on her own terms

Mechelle Voepel ESPN.com

She's pragmatic, focused, structured and disciplined, certain about how well-played basketball should look. Yet there's still something of the mystical about Muffet McGraw, who stepped down Wednesday after 33 years as Notre Dame's women's basketball coach.

As is perhaps required when coaching at a school with a leprechaun mascot, she believed in the concept of luck. She sometimes saw things as signs or omens. It's the charmingly quirky side to her.

But it wasn't luck that got McGraw 936 career victories, 842 of them at Notre Dame, where she took over in 1987 after starting her head-coaching career at Lehigh. It was having an analytical mind, a love of solving puzzles, an appreciation for hard work, a belief that there was a right way to do things. And a desire to teach young people that taking shortcuts would hurt them in ways they didn't realize.

And it was her ability to evolve. She did that as a coach, winning a national championship in 2001, when the WNBA was still a relatively new thing for players to aspire to, and then again in 2018, when players looked to college coaches to get them ready for the next level. McGraw showed she could do that.

She also evolved as a spokeswoman -- not just for women's basketball, but for women in coaching and other professional endeavors. It wasn't so much that she found her voice -- she always had that -- but that she decided to use it more often. And especially after Tennessee's Pat Summitt moved into an emeritus role in 2012 and died in 2016 due to early-onset dementia, Alzheimer's type, McGraw's voice became especially important.

McGraw is never one for euphemisms. Her postgame news conferences weren't for chitchat or meandering answers; she got to the point and didn't waste words. Yet when the time was right for eloquence, it flowed from her. McGraw really showed that at the 2019 Women's Final Four, when her impassioned remarks on needing more women in leadership struck a chord far beyond the world of basketball.

By Riley's senior season of 2001, Notre Dame was a No. 1 seed itself. After losing the Big East tournament final to UConn on Sue Bird's shot at the buzzer, the Irish beat the Huskies -- after trailing by as much as 15 -- in the national semifinals. In an all-Indiana final, Notre Dame prevailed over Purdue.

But 2001 also was the year McGraw made a seemingly mundane change of plans that ended up saving her life.

While out on the recruiting trail, McGraw originally had a seat booked for Sept. 11 on United Flight 175, which was bound from Boston to Los Angeles before being hijacked by terrorists and deliberately crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City. McGraw's then-assistant Kevin McGuff, now head coach at Ohio State, convinced her to instead take his flight leaving out of Rhode Island so they could compare notes.

McGraw said later she was obsessed for a time about how such a random decision had life-altering consequences. But then she let it go and rarely spoke of it. That year, she decided, luck had simply been with her.

Notre Dame continued to have good teams, but the recruitment of South Bend's Skylar Diggins-Smith in 2009 really moved the program to the next level. Between 2011 and 2019, Notre Dame went to the Women's Final Four seven times, making the final in six of those years.

During that stretch, the matchups with UConn really heated up, as did the coaching rivalry between McGraw and the Huskies' Auriemma. It made for some intriguing news conferences. And while McGraw didn't relish the verbal sparring the way Auriemma did, she also didn't back down from it.

Nothing was going to intimidate her, and the Irish fed off of that. Notre Dame had been a good program for a long time, and in the past decade, it became one of the best.

But even the best can use a good omen now and then. For McGraw, that came when she got the number "201" from a coat check clerk in Columbus, Ohio, on the eve of the 2018 Women's Final Four. This is a good sign, she thought, because 201 was close enough to 2001, her very lucky year.

A stretch, perhaps? Sure, but after a season in which the Irish had lost four players to ACL injuries, McGraw thought fortune might smile on them at the best possible time. It did: Two legendary game-winning shots from Arike Ogunbowale helped give Notre Dame and McGraw a second NCAA title.

The luck went the other way in 2019, when Ogunbowale missed a late free throw that could have sent the national championship game versus Baylor into overtime, and Notre Dame lost 82-81. With the Irish losing all five starters to the WNBA draft, it understandably might have been a good time for McGraw to retire.

But she asked herself, "Where's the honor in that?"

This past season was one of the toughest she had faced at 13-18, and at times the toll it took showed. But McGraw kept teaching. Then with time to reflect during the coronavirus pandemic shutdown, she realized she was ready to step away. Her former player and longtime assistant Niele Ivey was prepared to return to Notre Dame and take over. The Irish are ready to rebound from last season, and McGraw is ready to move on to a different chapter of her life.

She was lighthearted and jovial during her Zoom teleconference. She readily acknowledged she would miss things such as the intensity of games versus UConn.

"I love that rivalry," she said. "When we came into the Big East years ago, Connecticut was the measuring stick. And now to be a team that -- people know that we're going to give them a great game. It's going to be a terrific, hard-fought battle. I loved all those moments."

She also joked about what she would not miss.

"I think those in-game interviews," she said, grinning. "It's the third quarter of the national championship, Mississippi State just went on a 10-0 run, and now is a great time to talk to me on the sideline about what I'm thinking about the rest of the game. Holly Rowe ... gotta say, I'm not going to miss it."

McGraw sounded at peace with her coaching career and what's next for her, which will include teaching, mentoring, public speaking and activism. Might she coach in the WNBA? She said no, that coaching is over. There's plenty else to do.

Asked the advice she would give Ivey, McGraw had a ready response.

"You've got to believe in yourself," McGraw said. "I think Eleanor Roosevelt said, 'Do what you want, because you're going to be criticized anyway.' You want to stay the course, even when things get a little rocky. You have to be that voice and that one constant in a player's life."

McGraw has been that for decades. Now, she can have an impact on even more lives.

"I'm ready to move away from basketball," she said. "I've done it for over 40 years, and I'm looking forward to doing something else. I'm open to so many things. Anything that helps women, I'm going to be there. "

 

[ulukinatme]

Wow, that is a surprise. I felt like she was going to retire soon, but I definitely thought she would want to be back and leave on a better note. The program should be in good hands with Coach Ivey though.

How quickly do they get her statue up in front of the JACC?

Notre Dame <S>Man</S> Woman

 

[BGIF]

Meet Niele Ivey: Notre Dame's next head coach
Graham Hays ESPN.com

Niele Ivey always thought she would know when the right fit came along.

For so many years one of the most coveted assistant coaches in women's basketball, she would know when it was time to leave the comfort of her alma mater for a head-coaching position. She would know when it was time to leave Notre Dame.

Instead, it turns out that her first head-coaching job will bring her home to replace someone who seems irreplaceable.

With Muffet McGraw's surprise decision to retire after 33 seasons, nine Final Four appearances and two national championships, Ivey will take over as just the fourth coach in program history.

Ivey isn't quite a Notre Dame lifer -- she grew up in St. Louis and played a lot of basketball before she set foot in South Bend, Indiana -- but she might as well be. She was a star on the court for the Fighting Irish, the point guard of the program's first national championship team. She was an assistant for more than a decade. You could measure the passage of time in her life by watching her son, Jaden, shoot baskets after games at Purcell Pavilion, growing from a boy who heaved the ball at the rim into a recruit who will play at Purdue.

Now it's her turn. Taking over a program that has won multiple national championships in women's basketball, Ivey faces a daunting challenge. But there are reasons many people watched for so many years to see what job would feel right to her.

Who is Notre Dame's new coach? Let's take a look.

Was Ivey the obvious choice?
She was the right choice, but Notre Dame didn't lack for options, even without leaving campus. Like any Hall of Famer, McGraw had her coaching tree. That included current Ohio State coach Kevin McGuff and Wisconsin coach Jonathan Tsipis. Yet like some of her peers at the top of the sport, namely Tara VanDerveer and frequent nemesis Geno Auriemma, McGraw enjoyed remarkable continuity within her coaching staff in recent seasons.

Carol Owens returned for her second stint on McGraw's staff in 2010. A former star on the court, Beth Cunningham joined in 2012. Until Ivey departed prior to the 2019-20 season, that trio was a constant. They were part of seven Final Four appearances and a national title. Unlike Ivey, Cunningham and Owens had previous head-coaching experience. Cunningham compiled a 167-115 record in nine seasons as VCU coach, including an NCAA tournament at-large bid -- no small feat for a mid-major. Owens had a bigger hill to climb when she took over Northern Illinois, but neither the three coaches who preceded her nor the coach who succeeded her matched her winning percentage at the MAC school.

But turning over the program to a trusted lieutenant was never the goal. McGraw always -- but more and more acutely in recent years -- sought equality of opportunity for women in coaching. She wanted to encourage the next generation of coaches and use her own bully pulpit to ensure that doors were open to them -- hopefully in any basketball setting but certainly within the women's game. If either sought the role, Cunningham or Owens could have carried on the Notre Dame tradition. But in part precisely because Ivey hadn't yet been a head coach, she was always the ideal fit to carry on not just tradition but also what McGraw saw as her own legacy.

"She will be a fantastic role model and a leader in the women's empowerment movement," McGraw said in a statement.

A former player, a longtime and loyal assistant, not to mention a mom, Ivey is the person McGraw believes the women's game needs -- and for too long hasn't sufficiently encouraged.

How did she get here?
Notre Dame was just a couple of seasons removed from the Midwestern Collegiate Conference when Ivey arrived for the 1996-97 season. McGraw had shaped the program into a consistent winner over the previous decade, but the Fighting Irish didn't yet matter nationally. They hadn't been more than a No. 7 seed in the NCAA tournament.

By the time Ivey moved on to the WNBA five years later, Notre Dame was a champion. Yes, two-time All-American and Naismith winner Ruth Riley had a little something to do with that. But after coming back from a torn ACL that wiped out her first season on campus, Ivey was hardly less instrumental. She remains second in program history in steals and fourth in assists.

A second-round pick by the Indiana Fever in the loaded 2001 WNBA draft that produced Tamika Catchings, Lauren Jackson, Riley and Penny Taylor, among others, Ivey started 70 games in her first three seasons, including 26 starts as a rookie while she was pregnant with Jaden. She played five seasons in the league and also played professionally in Spain.

Ivey then transitioned to coaching as an administrative assistant at Xavier under McGuff, who was an assistant at Notre Dame when Ivey played for the Irish.

"I'm a relationship person," Ivey told ESPN in 2018. "So it was a perfect fit for me to be around the game I love and mentor young women. That came naturally for me."

The two seasons at Xavier led to the opportunity for Ivey to return to Notre Dame, where she quickly became the sort of name that popped up every offseason when head-coaching jobs opened. She had offers along the way. But it wasn't until the NBA's Memphis Grizzlies came calling last year that Ivey finally left McGraw. She became the ninth female assistant coach in the NBA and worked extensively with the team's guards, including standout rookie Ja Morant.

What are her strengths?
Ivey was McGraw's pupil. She isn't her clone.

That is to say that Ivey is similar to her old boss only in the sense that neither feels the need to be like someone else. Even after decades in "Michiana," the distinctly Midwestern border region of Indiana and Michigan, McGraw never lost her Philadelphia directness. Nor did she cease to be an introvert, no matter how public a figure she became. She endured small talk. She did the necessary meet-and-greets for the school. But she preferred to study basketball.

Ivey approaches things, well, differently.

"People gravitate toward her because of that smile and how she is with people," former Notre Dame assistant Tsipis said. "There's a natural magnetism."

McGraw's style worked for her. There is a reason Skylar Diggins-Smith said there is something about the coach that made players want to "move a mountain for her." But Ivey brings an energy and an ability to communicate that will serve her well with a generation of players used to dialogues.

Perhaps the best way to sum up what Ivey brings to the job is through Diggins-Smith.

Ivey had the charisma and playing résumé to help win the recruiting battle that allowed Notre Dame, then stuck in a Sweet 16-and-out rut, to beat Stanford for the hometown prodigy. She had the tactical acumen to be in charge of the scouting report when Diggins-Smith and the Irish finally beat longtime nemesis Tennessee in a regional final to reach the 2011 Final Four, figuring out how to slow the top-seeded Lady Vols and helping McGraw adjust on the fly when Tennessee came out playing more zone than Pat Summitt's team had shown all season.

Throughout those seasons that lifted Notre Dame to a place among the elite that it maintained for a decade, Ivey had the power of personality to bring the best out of Diggins-Smith.

"She could get through to Skylar in a way nobody else could," Tsipis said, citing the respect that came from playing the same position at the school and playing in the WNBA. "I just think Niele understood high-elite players have different buttons you have to push. When Skylar needed to be told she wasn't where [she] needed to be at, Niele could tell that with a stern talk, and they could move on and not have anything that ever seemed like it was personal. It was always a really good balance between her and Muffet of getting the best out of Skylar."

What will Notre Dame look like under Ivey?
With as much time as Ivey spent around McGraw as both a player and a coach, it would be a shock if the Fighting Irish undergo a revolutionary transformation on the court.

Whether that means total adherence to the Princeton offense that McGraw loved remains to be seen, but even McGraw was willing to tweak that in recent years to fit personnel.

"I think it will be a really smart team," Tsipis said. "I think that they will play with a lot of passion. She will want them to play fast in transition. And to be honest, probably the biggest thing is they'll play with a lot of confidence."

Ivey will also have a fresh canvas. Success finally caught up to Notre Dame this past season, which would have ended without a place in the NCAA tournament. McGraw successfully navigated transition after transition, from teams led by Diggins to Jewell Loyd to Arike Ogunbowale. But the timing of first Loyd and then Jackie Young leaving early for the WNBA draft, along with Ali Patberg and a handful of other promising players transferring, essentially left Notre Dame short a recruiting cycle. It simply didn't have the personnel to compete this season.

Assuming there aren't any defections, that should change with the arrival of four top-50 recruits next season to complement rising sophomores Sam Brunelle and Anaya Peoples.

 

[Ndaccountant]

this had to be in the works for quite a while to move so swiftly

Bingo.

Plus, knowing the control freak MM is, I am sure she went to Jack, told her about the retirement, told her than NI was taking over, and probably told him how much to pay her. I suspect Jack did very little here.

 

[BGIF]

Skylar Diggins-Smith
@SkyDigg4
·
3h
Keep an eye on the transfer portal now! Niele the best in the game, ND sells itself

 

[arrowryan]

I fully expect Niele to absolutely kill it in recruiting. She's going to do a very good job at Notre Dame.

 

[texbender]

Muffett had a great career at ND and the university couldn't have asked for anything more.
Coach Ivey should keep things rolling, and always seemed like the obvious next coach if she wanted the position.
Thanks Coach McGraw for wonderful times!

 

[RDU Irish]

Bingo.

Plus, knowing the control freak MM is, I am sure she went to Jack, told her about the retirement, told her than NI was taking over, and probably told him how much to pay her. I suspect Jack did very little here.

I agree with this.

Also - commission that statue - stat. Nobody more deserving.

 

[Irish#1]

Yes and no.

She needed 67 wins for 1000 overall. In championship run years that's maybe two seasons, more likely three. Healthy, the material is there for a couple of 23 wins a season.

But the repeated emotional breakdowns at pressers I thought were telling. They weren't just about a game loss, a losing season, or the loss of consecutive milestones, like NCAAs, conference championships, etc. There was a bigger toll being taken.

After reading this and thinking about it more, I think you're right. The press conferences and tweets about women's equality became much more frequent and more of a norm compared to a few years ago. She is ultra competitive.

Noie: Nobody better for this Notre Dame head coaching job than Niele Ivey
By Tom Noie South Bend Tribune 5 hrs ago

https://www.ndinsider.com/basketball/womens/noie-nobody-better-for-this-notre-dame-head-coaching-job-than-niele-ivey/article_9f1c5cc5-d8be-56b7-ad87-8dff84918d5f.html

Using hindsight, this appears to have been planned or at least in the planning stages for a while.

 

[Irish#1]

I fully expect Niele to absolutely kill it in recruiting. She's going to do a very good job at Notre Dame.

I'm already curious on how well she will recruit. She should do very well.

 

[IrishFaninTX]

I'm already curious on how well she will recruit. She should do very well.

I'm pretty sure she was one of the major recruiters when she was on staff before. I think recruiting will actually take a big step and be better than it was.

 

[irishandy]

Niele won a championship as a player, an assistant coach, and I think she has the talent to win as a head coach. Great hire by ND. She was involved in the latest recruiting class before leaving for the NBA. Niele will get ND back to where it was.

 

[BGIF]

Miele Ivey ND Presser

Miele Ivey ND Presser

https://und.com/watch-live-niele-ivey-press-conference/

 

[Old Man Mike]

Two cents:

1. You could see it all season long with Muffet. She couldn't believe that it was taking these players so long to figure some things out and gel. I believe that the entire season, and especially "the third quarter" (when she was sure they'd have it together by then) just stressed her to near breaking and certainly killed all the joy;

2. Muffet had one flaw: she didn't like to manage a team with more than about seven players who would actually have to be substituted. I never understood how such a great coach had any problem with this (well, when I coached a little, I'll admit that I didn't enjoy the looks that I'd get from a player who expected to play more, but heck this is Muffet McGraw) --- I believe that it even cost her some transfers. I will be riveted in my interest to see if Coach Ivey recruits and plays full rosters. What I can't believe is that ANY coach can replace is Muffet's brilliant in-game defensive shifts to keep opponents really off balance.

 

[arrowryan]

I'm already curious on how well she will recruit. She should do very well.

I'm pretty sure she was one of the major recruiters when she was on staff before. I think recruiting will actually take a big step and be better than it was.

I believe she was the recruiting coordinator before she left for Memphis.

 

[texbender]

I believe she was the recruiting coordinator before she left for Memphis.

My parents lived next to Ivey for years, and often commented that she was never there...always on the road recruiting.

 

[BGIF]

I believe she was the recruiting coordinator before she left for Memphis.

She became ND's RC in 2012. She's experienced that's the good news. The bad news is she was the recruiting coordinator during the drop off in Top 10 recruit signings and the bunch of “chemistry misfit” transfers that depleted the roster.