Notre Dame lost so many, but gained Jessica Shepard

If you’ve been following the march of Muffet McGraw’s Notre Dame to Sunday night’s championship game (and pity those who haven’t), you’re familiar by now with the four different Fighting Irish players lost for the season to ACL tear injuries.

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But it has been the unexpected addition of Jessica Shepard, transfer from Nebraska, that catapulted Notre Dame to the precipice of a championship every bit as much as the emergence of Jackie Young as the program’s next signature star, Arike Ogunbowale’s toughness and clutch shooting, or Marina Mabrey’s point guard self-reinvention.

And while the fit is a perfect one, both sides are aware of how many things had to happen to make this marriage possible. So how often does Muffet McGraw think about that, on this delightful unlikely march to the top?

“I would say every game, we have a toast to the state of Nebraska and Jessica Shepard for being with us,” McGraw said Friday night, following Notre Dame’s 91-89 win over Connecticut. “Because we wouldn’t be here without her.”

Consider what was required of Jessica Shepard, person, to get to this point. She has been a Nebraska basketball legend since she was still in middle school, the great hope of the state, and arguably the finest women’s basketball player the Cornhusker State ever produced. 6’4, with remarkable court vision and the passing to match, shooting range beyond the three-point line, an utter nightmare of a matchup for anyone.

Accordingly, as she starred in high school, first in Lincoln, then Fremont, a fan base’s hopes and dreams were pinned on her before she could even drive a car, receiving her scholarship offer after eighth grade. Her mother and father played high school ball, her mom earning all-Nebraska second-team honors. Her grandfather, Wes, coached prep teams to 519 wins and is in the Nebraska Hall of Fame. Her older brother and sister both played Division II ball.

So when Shepard enrolled at Nebraska, it was less a collegiate choice and more of a fulfilled prophecy in the minds of many, not to mention a short drive home from a family Shepard relies on for emotional support.

But on the court, things stagnated. Shepard played as well as expected freshman year, but Connie Yori, who’d recruited her, was dismissed. Amy Williams took over, and began the task of building, but that promised to take a while, and Shepard knew she had only four years of eligibility, an awareness of how precious those are.

“I think they’re just two very different programs,” Shepard said Saturday. “Nebraska is rebuilding a program, and Notre Dame has a well-established program. I think the coaches at Nebraska are doing a great job of building that program up, and I think they’ll build it into what they want it to be. But I think to be able to come into a university where you’re being coached by a Hall of Famer, and just have that insight every day, and then the assistant coaching staff, that has a ton of experience is it’s an experience you don’t get everywhere.”

Because of the coaching change at Nebraska, Shepard and the Notre Dame coaching staff believed they had a chance to get her eligible immediately. But ask Te’a Cooper and Dawn Staley if that’s anything like a guarantee. It took Shepard knowing where her talent would be best nurtured, and to embrace the chance to be a big fish in a bigger pond.

“She’s good friends with Brianna Turner, and she knew Arike and Marina from USA basketball,” McGraw said. “So she had a level of comfort and probably why she made the initial call to us. Then coming on campus, felt really comfortable with the girls.”

And the moment the NCAA granted Shepard the right to play is etched in the minds of both Shepard and McGraw.

“The day of our exhibition game, I was home,” McGraw said. “Got a call from Jill Bodensteiner, and she said Jess is eligible. I know I was screaming and jumping up and down and couldn’t wait to get started and retool the offense to accommodate her.”

Shepard was practicing, the Fighting Irish staff already salivating at the chance to deploy her, but not clear when they could.

“I had just got done doing a workout with [assistant coach] Beth [Cunningham] because we didn’t think I’d be playing in the game that night,” Shepard said. “So when the compliance people ran in the gym, and they told me that I was cleared, it was just a surreal feeling. I mean everyone in the gym just a relief was lifted off their shoulders. It was just an exciting feeling.”

Consider that this is merely part one of the battle. Shepard was eligible, sure. But now McGraw had to alter her offense on the fly. And Shepard needed to learn it. But the basketball lifer, if anything, served as a leader even as she acclimated.

“The transition for her, I thought was seamless,” McGraw said. “She really, from the first day of practice, was the one that was encouraging the freshmen. She picked things up really quickly. She has a great basketball IQ, really understood the game. So that part was pretty seamless.”

McGraw’s offense is complicated, a Princeton-style scheme, and she’s asked Shepard to be the fulcrum of it in many ways, operating out of the elbow, the high-post passing facilitator, often scorer as well. It’s a tribute to Shepard’s ability that she’s thrived at both, with a 55.9 percent mark from the field, 80th in the country, and a 14.0 assist percentage, per HerHoopStats, including 19 assists in the NCAA Tournament, five against Connecticut.

And yet the most remarkable part of Shepard’s tenure at Notre Dame may be ahead of her. McGraw acknowledged that she isn’t fully unleashing Shepard this season, in part because of a desire to simplify what she needed to run as she learned it in real time, in part because while Shepard the perimeter shooter is an unstoppable weapon, 6’4 with a quick release, they also need Shepard the rebounder on those plays. So come next year, with Brianna Turner back, the world will get a closer look at all Shepard can be—and so will WNBA teams, you can be sure.

“Yeah, I think people are looking at it right now like oh, she’s a five,” Shepard said. “And I’m like hmm, no nowhere near a five, but next year when we have some of the hurt players back, I think it’ll be an opportunity for me to play a little more on the outside like Kat [Westbeld] does this year, and showcase my shooting abilities.”

Before that happens, though, Shepard has one more moment she grew up dreaming about in Nebraska to live out. It’ll require some new challenges—a sprained ankle she’s playing through, a difficult defensive assignment in Mississippi State’s tower of a center, Teaira McCowan—but it all dates back to some family basketball games in the Shepard basement.

She grew up watching the Final Four, the national championship every year. And it clearly had an effect.

“When I was little, playing in the basement with my sisters, acting like we were in the National Championship and cutting down the nets in our basement to me now, and finally being able to play in one… We had this little hoop that we’d put on the back of the door, and I would always be taking it off, and wearing the net around my neck.”

Those family members, along with her parents, will all be in the Columbus crowd Sunday night. If Notre Dame wins, they’ll see that little girl who came barreling up the stairs with a net around her neck grown into a champion.