First Final Four Head Coach

The 1998 Lady Razorback basketball team that went to the NCAA Final Four had produced three Division I assistant coaches until today, when Sytia Messer became the first to elevate to head coach. Tennessee Tech made the announcement today (and now we know why Sytia was needing those photos a couple of weeks back).

The MVP of the NCAA West Regional, Messer had a Cinderella career at Arkansas, setting the mark for consecutive games played and helming Arkansas' other great moment, winning the WNIT in 1999 as senior.

She was associate head coach at Georgia Tech, and takes over a program that had a 40-year history at TTU.

Who are the other two Lady'Backs in Division I from that team?

That would be Tennille Adams at Northwestern and Christy Smith at Valparaiso.

A lot of people thought the 1998 team was a miracle squad. Really? Let's take a look at where they are today. Along with three Division I coaches, we have a published author (Celia Anderson), sports director of a major US market (Tiffany Wright), former WNBA player now high school coach (Wendi Willits) -- and this is just off the top of my head.

Still, very cool to consider the player who was the leading scorer at the regional (Messer), the player that had the go-ahead offensive rebound and stick-back against Duke (Adams) and the player who stood at the free throw line and hit four ice-cold free throws to clinch it (Smith) are now all coaching at the top level.

Maybe there's a book in there somewhere -- I claim it first.