Expect More!

Muffet McGraw coached hundreds of smart, talented young women in her thirty-three seasons as the head coach of the University of Notre Dame women’s basketball team. She says that almost all of them struggled with confidence. In Expect More!, McGraw motivates women to fly past the barriers that limit their confidence so they can attain the highest positions of leadership.

In a comment at the 2019 NCAA Final Four press conference that went viral, McGraw said, “We don’t have enough female role models. We don’t have enough visible women leaders. We don’t have enough women in power.”

She wasn’t just talking about basketball.

In Expect More!: Dare to Stand Up and Stand Out, McGraw shares a bold message: It’s time for women to take a rightful and fair place in positions of leadership. In order to do that, she says, women should approach every opportunity not only with confidence but also with swagger. After all, “You can’t have success without confidence. And you can’t have swagger unless you are successful at what you do.”

McGraw came to leadership naturally through sports. Growing up in Philadelphia prior to the passage of Title IX—which sought equality in sports—she was often the only woman on the court with nine men.

Nevertheless, even well into her time at Notre Dame, McGraw found inequalities between her women’s team and the men’s teams on campus. “The men were flying to places and women were taking the bus.” she says. She felt it was her duty to the women she coached to speak out about the unfairness. By the end of her coaching career, McGraw was a leading spokesperson for women’s basketball and women in leadership.

In Expect More!, you will also hear some of the behind-the-scenes stories that helped to shape the success of McGraw and her Fighting Irish and her evolving role as a key figure at a university founded on male leadership.

While the book is primarily a guide for women to expect more in their careers and family lives, it’s also an important book for men, a primer to help them learn about how to partner with women in family life, how to raise the next generation of strong women, and to work for and with women who are in leadership positions in business.

Muffet McGraw retired in 2020 after thirty-three years as head coach of the University of Notre Dame women’s basketball team. With an overall record of 936-293, she led the Irish to two national championships (2001, 2018). McGraws’s teams appeared in twenty-six NCAA tournaments, including seventeen Sweet Sixteens, nine Final Fours, and seven championship games.

Among her many honors, McGraw ranks first on the all-time wins list among single-sport coaches in the history of Notre Dame athletics. She is a three-time consensus NCAA coach of the year and a seven-time conference coach of the year. In 2017, McGraw was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame—the thirty-second woman member and thirteenth female coach. She received the 2017 Legends of Coaching Award from the John R. Wooden award committee.

A native of West Chester, Pennsylvania, McGraw earned her bachelor’s degree in sociology from Saint Joseph’s University in 1977.