FAYETTEVILLE -- Of the active coaches' tributes to Pat Summitt, Gary Blair's will mean the most to most Arkansans.
Summitt, winner of eight national championships and a record 1,098 victories piloting Tennessee women's college basketball from 1974-2012, died Tuesday after fighting Alzheimer's Disease diagnosed in August 2011.
Though Texas A&M's head women's basketball coach since 2003, Blair coached the Arkansas Lady Razorbacks from 1993-2003, battling Summitt's Tennessee Lady Vols in the only Final Four that Arkansas' women have ever attained.
It was in 1998. Blair's Razorbacks, ultimately 22-11 but only 7-7 in the Southeastern Conference, improbably won the NCAA West Regional as "Good Morning America's Team," Blair quipped of the wee-hour Central Standard Time endings of Arkansas' West Regional night games on the West Coast.
There was nothing improbable about Summitt's Lady Vols that Arkansas met in the Final Four semifinal in Kansas City, Mo.
Summitt's Lady Vols not only rampaged unbeaten through the SEC and conference Tournament but everywhere. Arguably the best college women's team ever assembled, they finished 39-0 including 86-58 over Arkansas in the Final Four semifinal and 93-58 over Louisiana Tech in the national-championship game.
ESPN, televising the NCAA women's tournament, so identified women's college basketball with Tennessee that it singled out the Lady Vols while advertising the tournament before it began.
So there was a sense who was wanted in the championship game as officials called several fouls on Arkansas before finally whistling one on Tennessee.
Blair wryly argued as only Blair can.
"I told them, 'That lady over there doesn't need your help," Blair recalled. "She's going to get it done."
And, of course, she did, easily.
Blair, who has won a national championship at A&M, and Summitt clashed 13 times on the court. Summitt's Lady Vols won 12.
Blair did recount one victory off the court, giving Summitt's then 4-year old son Tyler a Hog hat that Blair said Tyler wore incessantly.
""She couldn't get it off of him," Blair was quoted by the Dallas Morning News' Sports Day website.
"I can't even imagine where our game would be without Pat," Blair said in a statement Tuesday issued through Texas A&M. "Her legacy will be the impact she's had on us all. It extends beyond her Lady Vol family and includes any of us who have competed on every level. I'm honored to have competed against her and proud to have called her my friend. The game will miss her, and nobody will have any idea how much she has meant to the game until later on."
Blair said everyone from the game's pillars to the game's novices that met her will miss her as much as will the women's game itself.
"When Pat comes into a room, she can hold a room as well as anybody because she just has that aura and presence about her," Blair said. "She can make everybody in the room seem important if you're talking to her, whether you're a junior high coach or a newspaper writer or another colleague."
On behalf of the SEC, Commissioner Greg Sankey issued this statement: Pat Summitt transformed the lives of people she touched: her colleagues, her competitors, and especially her players. Through her character, passion and vision, she also transformed the game of women's basketball, impacting the lives of countless young people and forever changing intercollegiate athletics. The championships she won resulted from the larger influence she had on the people who played for her, worked for her and were fortunate enough to associate with one of the most accomplished persons in the history of college sports. Pat will always have a place of honor in the Southeastern Conference and our prayers are with her family at this difficult time."
Summitt continued impacting lives even as her life slipped away. The Pat Summitt Alzheimer's Clinic opens in December in Knoxville, Tenn.
Sports on 06/29/2016