Gary Blair

Seventeen days. That’s all it took. Just 17 days for Gary Blair and his Texas A&M Aggies to make quick work of five storied programs in women’s basketball on the way to the 2011 NCAA national championship. In rapid succession, Blair steamrolled C. Vivian Stringer’s Rutgers squad before overwhelming the Georgia Bulldogs in a lopsided victory. Blair then exacted revenge on Kim Mulkey after falling to her Baylor Bears three times during the regular season to earn a spot in the Final Four. In the closest game all season, the Aggies upended Tara VanDerVeer’s Stanford Cardinal by one point. In the national championship game against Muffet McGraw, Blair outlasted the Fighting Irish to earn his spot atop the college basketball world. The outspoken Blair was a winner. He won three state championships at South Oak Cliff, led Arkansas to a Final Four, captured 18 conference titles, and registered more than 850 wins during his career. He built programs at places where basketball was an afterthought and championed the hopes, dreams, and aspirations of female athletes for more than 50 years.