Celebration planned for Notre Dame women’s basketball team’s arrival

It will go down as one of the most iconic shots in women’s basketball and forever be remembered in Irish lore.

Notre Dame’s final play in Sunday night’s NCAA Women’s National Championship basketball game was in the hands of Milwaukee native Arike Ogunbowale.

On Friday, she landed a jumper with just one second remaining in overtime, to kick the previously unbeatable University of CT out of the finals. And they upset them on Friday night in Columbus, and then had to take down Mississippi State, which, again, it was another number one seed, but they were just a little bit of a better number one seed than Notre Dame.

There were three seconds left in the game and Notre Dame had one last chance.

“We just want to win a national championship”, said Mabrey.

When new Notre Dame hero Arike Ogunbowale was a high school senior, she made an announcement on Twitter about the five schools she would decide between when making her collegiate selection.

Mississippi State dominated much of the game. That delivered Notre Dame’s seventh double-digit comeback victory of the season, third in the past four games and second at this Final Four.

With three seconds left, the Irish inbounded the ball.

Mississippi State still led by five on a Johnson 3-pointer with just under two minutes left.

It was the second straight game that Ogunbowale hit a shot in the final second to carry the Irish.

So when are the Kings and the city of Sacramento going to bid for a women’s Final Four? Only moving to point guard from shooting guard after graduate student Lili Thompson’s injury, Mabrey is not a prototypical point guard, and struggled with the pressure early on to the tune of seven first-half turnovers. So when we came out in the second half, we wanted to make sure our team offense was good.

“My brother told me to just go out there”, Ogunbowale said.

You know the rest now. OK, so everybody go right down the middle and drive it to the rim, ‘ ” said Mabrey, Notre Dame’s most prolific 3-point shooter. “They thought we were going to get worn down and not be able to make it this far, but here we are-like it or not”.

“I definitely have one more year before I think about anything like that”, she said. “I just can’t really believe it”, said Stone. Still, she managed to throw up a fadeaway 3-pointer.

Beyond any stat I could analyze for you, this game and this team is far more than that.

“There’s been so many great teams and so many players here with us celebrating in the locker room just now, all the former players”, McGraw said.

The Irish made only one more 3-pointer – Ogunbowale’s game victor from right wing. The Notre Dame Fighting Irish defeated the Mississippi State Lady Bulldogs 61-58.

Gregory Ogunbowale fought in the Nigerian army and played soccer and rugby before bringing his family to the U.S.