Currently the Irish are down to seven healthy scholarship players again — only because former walk-on and senior Katie Cole (who scored a career high six points at Wake Forest) was put on scholarship.
Whereas the NCAA restricts men’s basketball to 13 scholarships, the women get 15.
McGraw has never felt the need to go beyond 11 — two full teams, plus one in case of injury — especially when most game rotations have seven or eight players.
But the combination of injuries and especially the transfer portal — which saw reportedly and approximately 500 women basketball players use it last year, including former Irish Danielle Patterson (Indiana) and Jordan Nixon (Texas A&M) — leaves her little choice.
“We’re looking to get 15,” she said of the recruiting strategy in the coming years. “We don’t want to be in a situation where we’ve been the past few years where you just never know what’s going to happen at the end of the year. There are injuries, there are kids that transfer — we’ve got to be prepared to have a full roster.
“There are too many good players out there for us to look and say we only want to [give] one or two scholarships.”
Ideally, this year's Notre Dame roster would have included three former national players of the year from different outlets — seniors Jackie Young (Naismith) and Erin Boley (Gatorade), and fifth-year senior point guard Ali Patberg (MaxPreps), who sat out her freshman season at Notre Dame with a torn ACL.
Instead, Young turned pro after her junior year and became the No. 1 overall pick in the WNBA, Boley transferred to Oregon after her freshman season (currently averaging 8.3 points per game) and Patberg, who transferred after her sophomore year, is now leading the Indiana Hoosiers in scoring (13.8 per game) and assists (5.4).
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