COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Notre Dame and Mississippi State, which will play Sunday (ESPN, 6 p.m. ET) for the national championship, have never met before in women's basketball. But coaches Muffet McGraw and Vic Schaefer have faced off before in a previous title game.
In 2011, Schaefer was an assistant to Gary Blair when their Texas A&M team beat McGraw's Irish in the final. Schaefer was in charge of the Aggies' defense. Texas A&M won the program's only NCAA title then with a 76-70 victory, a difficult loss for the Irish to swallow.
That year, they had defeated Tennessee in the Elite Eight and UConn in the national semifinals, becoming the only program to beat those two teams in the same NCAA tournament.