Owungobale Wasn’t Supposed to Take The Last Shot at All !

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Last night we have seen one amazing and thrilling game, in which the Notre Dames women’s basketball team won the National Championship. To remind you, the Flying Irish were better than Mississippi State Bulldogs 61-58, after a buzzer-beating dagger from Arike Owungobale.
But what is very interesting in this case, is the fact that Owungobale wasn’t supposed to take the shot in the first place.
According to ESP, Notre Dame head coach Muffet McGraw made the play for Jessica Shepard, who was having a much better game than her teammate. McGraw said after the match that Owungobale had an awful night (5 of 20 from the floor) and that on the other hand, Shepard was hot, hitting 8 of 10. Also, the player who was guarding her, Teaira McCowan was fouled out.

“Arike hadn’t been shooting the ball particularly well. Jess was.” stated McGraw.

But things on the court looked different, and the player who was getting the ball inbounds, Jackie Young decided to switch the play in the last seconds, because of she noticed that the Mississippi made a surprising defense.

“For me, taking the ball out of bounds, whatever I was looking at, I didn’t like the way it looked,” Young said. “Before that I had told Arike, ‘Hey, if this matchup doesn’t look right, make sure you come back to the ball.’ I made sure she was heading my way and I passed it to her. When I gave it to her, I knew she was going to do something big.”

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So, in the span of just two days, Arike Owungobale became the ultimate hero of Notre Dame, and after hitting a game-winner against UConn, she repeated the same in the biggest game of her career.
And she wasn’t even planned to do it.