Gary Blair has received greater honors in coaching than selection to the University of Arkansas Sports Hall of Honor, a distinction he received Wednesday.
One question I would ask is why it took so long to recognize the only UA women's basketball coach of a NCAA Final Four team.
A more overriding question is why Bev Lewis, then women's athletic director at UA (before the men's and women's program merged), would not grant Blair a contract extension after the 2002-03 season.
Texas A&M, which may not have known then it had a women's basketball program or much cared, snapped up Blair, a native Texan and Texas Tech graduate, formerly at Stephen F. Austin, after 10 years at Arkansas. Lewis, an otherwise able administrator, tabbed former Georgia star Susie Gardner, then at Austin Peay, to replace Blair, whose teams (then called Lady Razorbacks before a since-fired UA leader meddled), went 198-110.
Gardner neither failed nor succeeded and quietly left the program after three seasons. I liked her personally but did not think her a dynamic coach. To her credit, Hot Springs product Shameka Christon, in Gardner's first season, was named Southeastern Conference player of the year in women's basketball.
So much did Blair want Christon, winner of two state titles under coach Jim Elser, that he asked me to put in a good word about his program before her senior year at HSHS. Momentarily caught speechless, a coach not usually asking such things of a sports writer, I neglected to point out that another ex-Lady Trojan, Joy Oakley, played for him and was recruited ostensibly for the purpose of securing Christon.
Tom Collen, a former Blair assistant at Arkansas who coached future pro star Becky Hammon at Colorado State, was seen as a high-profile replacement for Gardner. He proved something less than that, seeming to have lost the coaching stinger that elevated his Colorado State and Louisville teams. Another nice fellow but overmatched at UA, he was fired after the 2014 season.
Athletic Director Jeff Long, about whom it was written here that everything he touched at UA turned to lead, then hired an ex-Razorback player and assistant men's coach, Jimmy Dykes, to head the women's program. Talk about shanking a drive off the tee.
The Conway recruit Dykes mentioned in his first press conference as essential to the program's future eventually transferred to Mississippi State, there playing under Blair's former Arkansas aide, Vic Schaefer, now at Texas. Schaefer presided over one of the greatest upsets in college-basketball history when Mississippi State knocked off mighty Connecticut in the 2017 Final Four semifinals. Like Blair at A&M, Schaefer got people excited about Mississippi State women's basketball for the first time. He just couldn't get past South Carolina and Notre Dame in the national finals.
Back to Dykes, who soon proved himself better suited behind a microphone, from whence he came and where he returned. He stuck it out three seasons, by which time the UA program was on the skids. Jimmy Dykes -- can he really be 61? -- is a good man who deserves to be remembered as a true-blue Razorback and not as a failed coach because an overzealous AD considered himself an ivory hunter.
Although some think him the next man to lead the Razorback women to the Final Four, having taken Washington that far, the jury remains out here on Mike Neighbors. A Greenwood native and UA graduate, Neighbors is five wins shy of 100 after five seasons in Fayetteville but has not been able to push UA higher than a third-place tie in the rugged SEC. His fourth team, 2020-21, managed to beat Baylor and Connecticut and, when seeded No. 4, lost to No. 13 seed Wright State in the first round of the NCAA tournament. That team showcased Chelsea Dungee, perhaps the best UA player since Christon.
His 18-13 squad last season, 7-9 (tie for eighth) in the SEC, lived and died by the three-point shot and could not rebound effectively. He is said to have strong support in the Fayetteville community but one hears some discord among the rank and file.
If they care about UA women's basketball, it's in large part because Gary Blair was there first.
Print Headline: Blair earns overdue UA honor
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