It wasn't because the Notre Dame women were killing Georgetown so badly they could afford to do it.
Actually that helped.
But they also needed a body to fill minutes.
Notre Dame's women's basketball team captured the imagination of many on campus in March 1997 by scoring a string of upsets on the road in the NCAA championship tournament. The Irish made their first trip to the women's Final Four before losing to eventual national champion Tennessee in the semis.
Along the way they also created a "Rudy" legend of their ownl
With just seven players healthy for a Big East Tournament semifinal against the Hoyas -- and with a comfortable lead -- Coach Muffet McGraw looked down her bench and signaled team manager Christy Grady to report to the scorer's table.
Grady, a 5-8 junior, had played power forward in high school in Stockton, California, but had never done more than serve as an imaginary defender in Notre Dame practices.
That trend likely would have continued had Grady not joked about playing to assistant coach Carol Owens the previous evening. Notre Dame was desperately short of healthy bodies, having just lost a fourth player, senior Adrienne Jordan, to a season-ending injury in a victory over Rutgers. A fifth player had quit the team earlier in the season.
"I got a call around 2 a.m. from Coach Owens saying I should start thinking about what uniform I was going to wear," Grady recalls. "I couldn't get to sleep until 4 a.m."
Grady entered the game with about six and a half minutes remaining, and her teammates immediately began feeding her the ball in hopes she would score. She finally did, on a layup off a pass from her roommate, junior Mollie Peirick, with 1:40 to go. Grady's line on the score sheet also showed three rebounds and a steal. Notre Dame won the game 83-43.
Grady also played about a minute each in Notre Dame's NCAA tournament wins over Alabama and Memphis. Although she didn't score in either game, after the Alabama contest she did get to experience another aspect of being a collegiate athletic. She was randomly selected to take a drug test.