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BIG 12 CONFERENCE MEDIA DAYSOctober 18, 2006Gary BlairOKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA PETER IRWIN: We would like to welcome Coach Gary Blair from Texas A&M University. Coach Blair has agreed he will make an opening statement or two and then take questions from the floor. Welcome, Coach Blair. COACH BLAIR: I used to be somebody when I was at Dallas, Southfork Cliff (ph) and he was our PA announcer at our track meets there. And he has come a long way and hopefully I have, too. But eventually, when we retire we will be the two best Walmart greeters you have ever seen in your life and we will be very good at it. It is good to be in Oklahoma City. It gives us another conference. It gives us another venue and place where we can get people excited about women's basketball. Already Oklahoma and Oklahoma State have always done a good job within the state. But this is one of the best unknown high school areas in the country, and good high school ball because I grew up coaching six-on-six basketball back when Charles Heatly (ph) was getting it done, most of you all don't know anything about, but he was the best high school coach probably in the state back then and it was special. I signed a kid when I was at Louisiana Tech named Tasha Brown from Tulsa, and people say I was crazy signing a six-on-six basketball player from the state of Oklahoma. She helped us win a national championship and she had a great career and I think she is back coaching in high school now in Tulsa. But we are excited to be here. We are overrated, we are underpaid, and other than that, that's the same as what your job is because most of you are underrated. Most of you need a clothing allowance a little better than you have right now, but at the same time, I am glad to be here. Let's go. Questions? That's my journalism degree at Texas State. Didn't mean a whole lot, so I decided to go on to coaching. Q. Can you just talk about Morenike. You say freshman year this is a kid that will be a star in this league, and just how she has developed and how she has developed in terms of playing your style of defense and still being the offensive player she is? COACH BLAIR: She's probably the most under-recruited kid that's a star in the Big 12 Conference now. I mean, we beat out a couple of schools and everybody else passed on her, including the schools in her own state, LSU and Louisiana Tech. I knew what she was all about because I knew what that high school coach there was all about, and he produced Alana Beard from the same program. I think she is special because to me, she sort of like is a free safety on defense, sort of like a Roy Williams because all of a sudden she is all over place deflecting balls, getting blocked shots, and a majority of her shot blocks come off of defense. And that's what our defense is all about, is being able to help because we are going to pressure the ball, we are going to gamble, and she is just sort of roving in lanes out there getting the steals and the blocked shots and the deflections. I think Morenike will some day be a very good WNBA player. But right now we need her. We need her to do for our program -- she only averages 14 points a game and that's our leading scorer, but we need for her to elevate herself up to that star status that could also help us in recruiting. It could help us in the big-time crunch games when you have to go against an Oklahoma or a Baylor or somebody like that, to be able to deliver on a consistent basis. I think she is just very confident of herself, both on and off the court right now, and that's just making her a better person. She is always the one that the community service programs, they always want her to come and speak and she is very good at it. She played very well this summer over in Europe, and all of a sudden you look up and she was not playing more than 19 minutes a game and she would have seven deflections, seven steals and ten points or so. It didn't look like she was sweating out there. Remember, folks, this is going to be only our second year of playing outside. She was a post player in high school and a post player for us her freshman year. So she is just learning the game and the perimeter. And hopefully in years to come, she will make one of those USA teams. She has tried the last two years but hasn't made it. That just tells you how many great players there are in the country today. There are that many that are better than her and that's why the USA is as strong as it is. Q. Gary, what do you feel like your trip to Europe did this summer, did for your team? Did it build some togetherness? COACH BLAIR: I think it is a tremendous thing. I read a story, I forgot who did it, a couple weeks ago, a pretty good article about the highs and lows where some people believed in it. I believe in it wholeheartedly because it is an education experience taking your kids to the Louvre and taking them to the cathedrals and letting kids see something that probably the majority of you all haven't been to Europe. I hadn't been in 31 years. To be able to see things that we read about, that we listen. I think it gave our kids an awareness and appreciation also what we have over in the states, it made us appreciate the Europeans. They make every inch count over there, and their land and how they grow things over there and they are a whole lot cleaner than we are over here, to tell you the truth. There is not much litter over there. And they speak four to five languages. I speak broken English, okay? And I admire them for who they are and what they are doing and what they have. They don't -- I think it was good for our team, the quality of competition past the first game was not as good as I would have liked because they were just starting their seasons. But the first team we played over there was a good French team and I think we won by nine. It also gave my kids -- no one played more than -- we had 11 kids, 12 kids play and we had from six to 11 points on ten of those kids. So we were spreading it out, trying to develop a backup point guard while we were over there, trying to play Danielle Gant all on the outside this year, trying to develop confidence in our post players to be able to score, where before we were such a perimeter-oriented team. We went over there trying to become an inside-outside team. So we were able to work on some things. And other than that, I enjoyed it as much as the kids. I really did. I think it was a great trip. And basketball travellers, they do it right. They know how to combine both the educational part as well as the basketball part at the same time. We were over there with the Pepperdine men, and their coach was a first-year coach, and so he was a little bit more geared into his team. I was a little bit more geared into us enjoying the whole cultural experience. Q. Last year we talked about Courtney Paris. You said this freshmen when it is all said and done won't just be the best player in the nation, she may be one of the best women's players, period. There was a lot of awe when you made that statement. Now you look back and it seems very accurate. COACH BLAIR: The thing is we do our job sometimes when they are eighth and ninth and tenth and eleventh graders. We can tell when a kid is going to be that good. The thing that makes Courtney Paris so good, I think, is the charisma that she has off the court. I think she is going to be one of the best ambassadors for Oklahoma, like an Adrian Peterson or back to the Sellman brothers and that type of kid. She is going to be that for Oklahoma, just like Cheryl Swoops was for Texas, and Sophia Young for Texas. We are still trying to find that one person like that at Texas A&M, and hopefully maybe it will be Morenike some day when she gets out. But then at the same time, what Courtney is doing, she has got the best hands I have ever seen for a kid of her size. I mean, she is just -- she is just very special because post players today handle the ball as well as guards, and all of a sudden, when it is thrown in there and she has got that ball and you got Higgins cutting this way and Welch cutting this way and Leah Rush in the middle, you need to be an air traffic controller to see which is the best option to stop. The best option is to foul her before she passes off to one of the cutters. She is very good. But it is good for our conference right now, to have a player like her in our conference. I just hope she declares for the draft pretty soon. Q. Can you just talk about the enthusiasm for basketball at Texas A&M all the way around and men's, women's and just what you have seen from the community. COACH BLAIR: Most of you all are all from out of town, of course. You just don't realize what's happening there right now. Can you picture A & M University all summer long, people are talking basketball, not necessarily football or how good McGee is going to be or whatever, but they were talking about basketball. And it is a very special time right now and we are doing it at the same time. And that's what's the most special time because there has been good teams before, but there hasn't been that rich national presence of basketball. We are still growing. They are reading about us. Our media is doing a great job. Our marketing is doing a good job, but we are not selling the place out yet and that's up to us. That's why Coach Gillespie (ph) and myself are out there doing everything. We are out there working hard. I like to say he is Elvis out there and I'm Jimmy Buffet or something like that. Right now, he is the best thing going just about in men's college basketball. He is as good as a coach you can see. Just go to one of his practices and watch the intensity. It rubs off on our kids. It rubs off on me. I am very lucky to be associated at the same time that he is there. Just think how many great men's coaches we have in the league and when we had Coach Sutton and now we have his son and we have Coach Nye at Texas Tech and we are fixing to have his son pretty soon, and all these guys that are out there. It is a special time for Big 12 in basketball. And we want A&M to be, with our new arena, most of you do not know about it, they will start digging on December 1st, $17 million expansion on the new practice gyms, offices, the weight and training center and all that, is going to be very, very good. And a lot of that we copied a little bit off of Oklahoma, what they are doing here, what they did at Oklahoma. And it is going to be a special time, but it is good to be a basketball coach right now. But still, neither one of us are doing it. We are parade All-Americans right now as some of our teams in the conference have. What we have got to do is be able to get that elite, elite athlete to say, Hey, I want to play basketball at Texas A&M, and let A&M be a destination. And hopefully in years to come we are going to have that. Other than that, I think we are both coaching them up pretty good right now. We both got good staffs and we have a town that's very, very hungry for success. Q. Gary, as the coach of the team that's expected to contend with OU and picked second in the preseason polls, can you talk about the Big 12 tournament being in Oklahoma's backyard. COACH BLAIR: I would love to play Oklahoma at the Big 12 tournament because I know what game I would be in probably. But no, seriously, they are picking us second right now. Like I said, they have to pick somebody second. The coaches, it is a conspiracy. They are picking us second mainly because they want all the pressure on us right now. They know we have never been picked that high ever before. It is a conspiracy out there. Picking second through eighth in this conference will be very hard. It is easy to pick who is number one right now. They have proven it. They have all the horses back. They have a great recruiting class. They have Coach Coale back. We don't worry about Oklahoma right now, but we sure worry about everybody else in the Big 12. Texas is going to be a whole lot better. Don't rule out Texas Tech. They are picked too low. My golfing partner over here on the right over there, Coach Budke, folks, he has gotten new players. His golf game still sucks but he has ten new players out there. He is going to be very, very good, okay? You just get behind Oklahoma State because they are going to do the same thing in the Big 12 South that we did three years ago, same year is going to happen at Oklahoma State. Now, instead of the Big 4, there used to be in the Big 12 South, there is going to be a Big 6. And it is going to be a great basketball conference. Did I answer that question or did I go heading off in another direction? Halfway got it. PETER IRWIN: Coach, you did a great job as usual. Thanks for being up here and being with us. COACH BLAIR: Thank you, all.
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