N.C.A.A. Women’s Final: Baylor Is Champion With Win Over Notre Dame

“That was the plan, but it failed miserably,” McGraw said on Saturday. “We came into the season with all that on us: No. 1, defending champs. Sometimes, defending champs aren’t really because they don’t have their team back. But we did. We truly were the defending champs. It was a burden.”

And for the first three quarters on Sunday, it showed. In last year’s Final Four, Ogunbowale had come alive in the fourth quarter, hitting last-second shots to give her team victories in the semifinal and the championship game. Against Connecticut on Friday, Ogunbowale followed a 2-point first half with a 21-point performance. And against Baylor, the nation’s best big-moment player was energized once again, willing the Irish back into the game, only to come up just short.

As a result of Notre Dame’s comeback, the Lady Bears did not walk away with the dominant win it seemed they would at halftime. But for Brown, it was a fitting end to a college career, and to her journey with Mulkey, whom she has known since grade school. Brown’s mother, Dee, played at Louisiana Tech when Mulkey was an assistant there.

“Coach Mulkey has literally seen me grow up,” Brown said. Her mom coached her as a child, but she also learned from her father, the former N.B.A. player P. J. Brown, whose career ended with his first title in 2008, when he was with the Boston Celtics. She was in the arena the night her father hoisted a championship trophy. Now she has one of her own.

Mulkey calls Brown the “kindest, sweetest kid.” But when she arrived at Baylor, she needed to embrace her size and learn to lean in, instead of blend in.

“I wanted her to ask for the ball,” Mulkey said. “It’s O.K. to raise your voice and holler, ‘Give me the ball,’ ”