ND has more championship game appearances (6) than any other team. UConn has been in 5 and no other team has been in more than 2.
Because we have 1 NC and UCONN has 5.
Still has more NCs than most.
Dean was a great program builder/manager but a mediocre gameday tactician. Muffet is a great gameday tactician but has had some recruiting and roster management issues that have probably cost her a couple more final 4s and titles.
Smith took 5 teams to the champoinship game. He went 2-3, needing freakish lucky plays for both wins (Fred Brown's errant pass and Chris Webber's time out), with the 3 losses coming by 23, 9, and 13 points (the 23-point loss was the most lopsided in championship game history before 1990).
McGraw has taken 7 teams to the championship game. She is 2-5, but the two wins, while squeakers, were not the product of luck, and ND had excellent chances to win in 2 of the losses. The other losses were by 19 to Baylor and one of the all-time great woman players, and by 21 and 10 to UConn in a four-year Husky run bookended by UConn championship game wins by 33 and 31 points.
Muffet and Dean do have similarities. They both have run clean programs (although the UNC academic fraud scandal started near the end of Dean's run), and both have been unafraid to speak up on civil rights issues. And of course they're both wildly successful. But I'd give Muffet the nod in a head-to-head comparison.
This last loss as well, but to a much better team.
Will MM be remembered as the only person to hold her under 15ppg?