The master builders of the women’s Sweet 16 are Arizona’s Adia Barnes and Texas A&M’s Gary Blair. They are restoration specialists, no job too big, too messy or too tiresome.
Maybe they should go into business together: Barnes and Blair: We Fix Your Basketball Program.
After all, they’ve got a special connection.
Blair was hired by Texas A&M athletic director Bill Byrne. Barnes was hired by Greg Byrne, Bill’s son.
Blair took charge of an A&M operation that had not had a winning season for seven years, a bottom feeder of Big 12 bottom feeders, having reached the NCAA Tournament once. Ever.
Barnes accepted the monumental challenge of taking over an Arizona’s women’s basketball program that had one winning season in 12 years. It was such a daunting venture that on Thursday Barnes admitted she didn’t immediately say “yes” to Byrne’s offer.
“I had second, third, fourth and fifth thoughts,” she said in a Zoom interview, putting it in a long-range context that accepting the wrong coaching offer — even at your alma mater — might not always be the best move.
“Your first (head coaching) job might be your last job,” she said.
It wasn’t that Barnes didn’t already have a good job. She was at the 2016 women’s Final Four in Indianapolis, an assistant with the Washington Huskies, when Byrne offered her the Arizona job.
“They were waiting for us to finish the season but we kept on winning,” she remembers. “Then I accepted the job while I was in Indianapolis prior to the Final Four.”
Texas A&M’s Blair can take that a step further. In his eighth season at A&M, the Aggies won the national championship. If women’s basketball got the volume of recognition given to men’s college basketball, Blair would be known as well as Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim or Kentucky’s John Calipari.
Barnes and Blair have everything and nothing in common.
Barnes is 43. Blair is 75. Barnes was a pro basketball player. Blair was a proud member of the United States Marine Corps who worked in the restaurant business before returning to school at age 27 to play college baseball at Texas Tech. He has coached in 25 NCAA Tournaments, including 15 in succession. This is Barnes’ first.
These unlikely rivals in restoration have one shared memory: In the 1996 WNIT semifinals, Barnes, then a sophomore at Arizona, led the Wildcats past Blair’s Arkansas Razorbacks 80-77 in Amarillo, Texas.
Yes, Amarillo, Texas. How’s that for the first step to Saturday’s Sweet 16 Barnes v. Blair match in San Antonio?
Barnes was the game’s leading scorer, with 25 points, and she made an impression on Blair, then in his third season as the Razorbacks head coach.
“Barnes was a better post player than post players in the SEC who are 6-4,” Blair said in a postgame press session. “She was the difference.”
Arizona won the WNIT title a day later, Barnes went on to be the Pac-10’s 1998 Player of the Year and the leading scorer in Arizona history. Blair, then, 50, was just getting started, too. He coached Arkansas to the 1998 Final Four and was soon whisked away by A&M’s Bill Byrne where Blair became a first-ballot Hall of Famer.
Here’s some perspective: At Barnes’ age, 44, Blair coached Stephen F. Austin to the Sweet 16. Yes, Stephen F. Austin. He was just getting started, as is Barnes.
Texas A&M head coach Gary Blair cuts down the net after a win over South Carolina in an NCAA college basketball game Sunday, Feb. 28, 2021, in College Station, Texas. (AP Photo/Sam Craft)
The women’s Sweet 16 is, as always, stacked with blue-blood programs: UConn, South Carolina, Baylor, Maryland, Stanford and A&M.
There are relative newbies like Arizona and Missouri State, but none of the coaches have made a climb to match that of Arizona’s Barnes.
Missouri State coach Amaka Agugua-Hamilton, hired in 2019, took over a 25-10 program and went 26-4 her first season. That’s quite a change from Barnes’ 14-16 and 6-24 baptism to coaching seasons.
At this level, Cinderella stories often burn out in the Sweet 16.
You get the best shot from the super-powers like A&M. How good are the No. 2-seeded Aggies? They start three McDonald’s All-Americans: Aaliyah Wilson, Jordan Nixon and Ciera Johnson.
Arizona has recruited one McDonald’s All-American in history, junior forward Cate Reese. Even though she played high school basketball in Cypress, Texas — 70 miles from the A&M campus — Reese resisted recruiting pitches from A&M to take a chance on Barnes’ restoration project at Arizona.
If Blair is bitter, he didn’t sound that way after his club beat Iowa State in Wednesday’s Round of 32 victory .
“Give Coach Barnes so much credit for building that team, blending in a few transfers, blending in what she’s going to need because that is probably the best rebuilt program that we’ve seen in the last five to six to seven years,” he said.
If anyone would know, Gary Blair would.
