Karen Blair has said often she would take a shot at being a head coach when she felt the timing and fit were right. That fit came in the form of Georgia Tech, and that timing is now.
Blair, the seventh coach in Tech women’s basketball history, was introduced Monday during a news conference inside McCamish Pavilion.
“To the Yellow Jacket community, this is what I can tell you: I’m ready,” Blair said Monday. “I’m here to work. I want to compete and I want to lead with integrity. That’s what it’s about for me, is we want to compete to win, we want to have a standard of excellence, that’s what we work toward every single day.”
A career assistant and former standout as a player at SMU in the late 1990s, Blair takes over a Tech program that can be described only as in transition. The retirement of veteran coach Nell Fortner at the end of March left Tech without a coach and the team with a decimated roster — seven players from the 2024-25 squad have placed their name in the NCAA’s transfer portal since the Yellow Jackets lost to Richmond in Los Angeles in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
Blair said her first order of business is trying to establish relationships with the existing members of the team and to even try to convince those considering playing elsewhere next year to return to Tech for the 2025-26 season. Building a staff and scouring the transfer portal for additional talent are also of utmost importance and urgency.
The former associate head coach at Maryland has to do all that while balancing name, image and likeness deals and possible revenue-sharing payouts.
“I think if you talk to anybody that knows me, I love a challenge. And if we say we’re not facing interesting or challenging times right now in athletics, then we’re kidding ourselves,” Blair said. “But for me I actually have embraced it. These last three years, as a No. 2 (at Maryland), that’s what I was working on. My No. 1 job was trying to figure out how to best go forward in this new environment. I’m going to embrace it, I’m excited about it and I know right now this program is very well supported and that’s another reason that made it a really easy decision to be here.”
Blair was flanked Monday by Tech president Angel Cabrera on her right and Tech athletics director J Batt on her left. Batt said he was looking for someone with a track record of success, someone with a plan and someone who was a great fit.
Batt thanked the current members of the team for trusting his judgment in the hiring process as well.
“We had tremendous interest in this position,” Batt added. “We were very well prepared. As you know we went quickly. We had a ton interest. (Blair) rose to the top very, very early on in the process and it was clear she was the right choice.”
Blair played point guard at SMU from 1995-99 and began her coaching career following graduation from the Dallas school in 1999. She has been an assistant at Colgate, Texas-Arlington, North Texas and Virginia Commonwealth, respectively, before her previous her seven seasons at Maryland.
She said she’d like her offense to play with pace and space, and to be known for ball and player movement. Defensively, she will want her teams to control tempo and disrupt rhythm.
How quickly she can build a team to do those things at a high level remains to be seen.
“The standard is to go to the NCAA Tournament. That’s what you guys brought me here for,” Blair said. “I want to continue to grow that and that to be the standard for us going forward is that we’re dancing in March.”
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