Gary Blair's Last Season at Texas A&M Takes Me Back to SFA
COLLEGE STATION, Texas — When I saw the game pop up on the schedule I was intrigued. When I learned it was Gary Blair’s final season at Texas A&M, I knew I had to be there.
My Stephen F. Austin Ladyjacks were playing Blair’s Aggies one final time. The school that jump-started his career against the program he built into a national champion. No way I was missing that.
So, on that November evening, I stepped off from work a little early, made the three-hour drive to College Station and sat in Reed Arena.
Everything hit me like a time warp as I watched Blair tossing candy to strangers during pre-game.
I first met Blair in 1992. Back then, I was an undergrad at Stephen F. Austin and working for The Pine Log, the school’s student newspaper. I had just wrapped up working the women’s volleyball beat that fall, and I received a promotion — covering the Ladyjack basketball team.
Back then, the Ladyjacks were the BIG THING on campus. Blair had turned them into winners on a national scale. They were coming off a Sweet 16 berth the previous season and the town was preparing to host the Midwest Regional for the first time, the idea being that if SFA made the NCAA Tournament — and it was too good not to — it might play in its own regional.
Each Tuesday during basketball season I had 30 minutes, on my own, with Blair, to discuss anything Ladyjack-related. I can’t tell you how rare that is these days. Since I was also working for the campus radio station, I was busy and asking a lot of questions. The basketball questions lasted about 20 minutes. The non-basketball questions lasted about 10 minutes. He seemed genuinely interested in my life and I’d ask him questions about his. Blair really enjoyed talking to the media. It was a necessary evil on some level. He relentlessly promoted his team. He used any opportunity to do it. He didn’t throw candy back then, the way he does now at Texas A&M. Thing is, Blair was a journalism minor at Texas Tech, so he knew the value of being media-friendly. Ask any writer that has covered any of his teams.
He was so media-friendly that he worked with his former boss, then-Louisiana Tech head coach Leon Barmore, to arrange a Tuesday night game in Nacogdoches for the sole reason that ESPN would show it. Call it a dry run for March Madness.
Covering that team that season was a joy. They were utterly dominant. The women played the late game on doubleheader nights and I found out why when the men played the late game one night — the place was nearly deserted by the time the men tipped off. One night I did play-by-play for the campus TV station. Another night I did a tape-delay play-by-play for the campus radio station, right by the Ladyjacks’ bench, and for some reason, Blair took that opportunity to steal my half-eaten sandwich.
SFA cruised through the regular season, their own conference tournament, and hosted their second-round NCAA Tournament game (they received a first-round bye as a No. 4 seed). Then came the Midwest Regional at our house.
I had never covered that BIG of an event before. It was incredible. That Ladyjack team was good enough to win that regional and go to the Final Four. Ask any Ladyjack fan that was there for that Sweet 16 game against No. 1 seed Vanderbilt and they’ll tell you about the shot clock that blew a fuse. A 30-plus minute delay. SFA’s full-court press had Vandy on the ropes. The Commodores got their wind back and SFA lost by three points. The final didn’t feel that close. I only recently found out that the morning before the game, Blair sent someone to Kilgore, Texas, to retrieve their floor shot clocks as a backup.
It hit Blair hard after the game. Sitting up there during the post-game press conference you could tell he knew his best chance had passed him by. I didn’t quite capture that moment properly back then. I only realized it in hindsight.
A month later I got a phone call from the sports information director telling me to show up at the arena later that day. She didn’t tell me why.
Blair had resigned. He took the job at Arkansas. It was ironic. Blair spent several of our one-on-ones talking about the ‘University of’s’ that would never schedule his Ladyjacks because they knew they were in for a fight. And, now, he was going to a ‘University of.’
To his credit, he was never one of those 'universities of’ coaches that wouldn’t schedule SFA. Two years after he left for Arkansas, he brought the Razorbacks to Nacogdoches for a non-conference game. Naturally, the Ladyjacks made life miserable for the Razorbacks before Arkansas pulled away in overtime. At Texas A&M, Blair scheduled SFA several times, including a ‘return-the-favor’ trip to Nacogdoches several years ago. Before this season, Blair snuck up to Nacogdoches to be the keynote speaker at SFA’s tip-off dinner and took a tour of our new basketball practice center, probably saying to himself, “This would have made my life so much easier as a recruiter 30 years ago.”
I kept tabs on Blair’s career after he left. Oddly enough, I caught the Aggies on their 2011 title run. They just happened to be in the Midwest Regional played in Dallas that year, and I watched them beat Georgia and Baylor en route to the Final Four. Those Aggies played just like those Ladyjacks teams from 20 years before. And when Blair and the Aggies won the national championship, I felt a tremendous amount of pride when he name-dropped “Stephen F. Austin” in his post-game speech. He never forgot where his head-coaching career started.
That’s why I had to be there last month in College Station when SFA played A&M. I knew at some point I would venture down once he announced he would retire after the season. It didn’t matter that it was on a Thursday night and I would be a zombie at work the next day.
SFA, of course, pushed the Aggies to the very end. Blair’s choice of suit jacket was interesting — a hint of purple. He didn’t take it off until the second half. When Blair’s jacket comes off during a game is usually a sign of his comfort level with the game. And SFA made Blair and the Aggies really uncomfortable down the stretch.
After the game myself and my buddy, Chuck Cox (who also covered the Ladyjacks post-Blair), hung around Reed Arena a bit, just to see if we could say hello. Five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes went by and it seemed like he wasn’t coming out. Chuck asked a member of the sports information staff to let Blair know we were there. A few minutes later he ushered us back to the locker room. There, I saw something I don’t think I’ve ever seen in all my years covering sports.
Blair was at the far end of the room, with his Aggie players seated in front of him. Flanked on either side of Blair were close to a dozen former Ladyjacks and South Oak Cliff High School players. Blair’s first coaching job was at SOC, where he led the girls’ basketball team to five straight state tournaments, three state titles and coached Dennis Rodman’s older sisters, Debra and Kim.
They were telling stories about Blair’s impact on them. One of the players was Trenia Tillis, who was on that 1993 team and is now the head coach at Tyler Junior College. Another, I’m pretty sure, was Annie Norris, an SFA legend.
One player, who later went on to lead the athletic department at SOC, told the Aggies that when Blair was their coach he would make sure all of them were home safe before he went home. Another story I’ll keep to myself. But, let’s just say Blair is the type of guy you want in your fox hole, and this particular story was proof.
I was able to say hello to him briefly. Everyone wanted a moment with him on that night. I suspect it will be the same way in February when Arkansas comes to visit.
Blair has seen it all and done it all in women’s basketball. His career spans to the point where he won two national championships as an assistant coach at Louisiana Tech, with Barmore as the head coach and someone named Kim Mulkey running the point.
Thanks to him, and the Ladyjacks he coached, I have a deep respect for women’s basketball. If you get the chance, stop by Reed Arena sometime this season and just say thank you for, well, everything. Coaches of his ilk are getting rarer and rarer by the day.
You can find Matthew Postins on Twitter @PostinsPostcard.
Want to join in on the discussion? Click here to become a member of the All Aggies message board community today!
Follow AllAggies.com on Facebook and Twitter!
Want More Aggies News? Check Out The Latest In Texas A&M News Here
