FAYETTEVILLE — The SEC women's basketball coaching fraternity has added another link to Arkansas' glory years.
This time the link redirects to the Razorbacks.
Mike Neighbors, who took Washington to the Final Four last year, was officially named Arkansas' ninth head coach Monday. He will be formally introduced at a news conference Tuesday at 4 p.m.
Neighbors, 48, is a Greenwood native who has spent the past four seasons at Washington where he compiled a 98-41 record and went to the NCAA Tournament the past three seasons.
Neighbors will be paid $600,000 through April 2023, according to terms of his contract obtained through an open records request. Neighbors could receive up to $390,000 in athletic and academic incentives each year.
Arkansas must pay $1 million to break Neighbors' contract with Washington, which paid $290,004 per year through 2023, according to the Seattle Times.
"If Mike is willing to leave a top 10 program and come to a program that finished at the bottom of the SEC, then that's his loyalty and love for the state, and his love for his family, because his kids still live there," said Gary Blair, Texas A&M's head coach who supervised Neighbors from 1999-2001 at Arkansas. "He wants to come back because he wants to be a difference-maker."
Neighbors got his foray into the college game when he was hired as a support staffer for Blair in 1999, one year after the Razorbacks' only trip to the Final Four. Neighbors previously had been a high school head coach at Cabot and Bentonville, a job he landed one year after graduating from the University of Arkansas.
"One of my best recruiting jobs ever was taking Mike, when he was making $72,000 a year, and hiring him at Arkansas as my first director of basketball operations for $14,000," Blair said. "Now that's a pretty damn good job of recruiting because he was married and with a kid at the time. But he was willing to learn and wanting to get in the college game. Mike has paid his dues."
Neighbors is the third member from that Arkansas staff to be an active head coach in the SEC. Blair won a national championship at Texas A&M in 2011, and former Arkansas assistant Vic Schaefer coached Mississippi State to a national runner-up finish Sunday.
"I am really excited for my good friend Mike Neighbors," Schaefer wrote in a statement to WholeHogSports. "I think it's a home run for both the University of Arkansas and Mike. I am so glad that he's able to be coming home to his dream job.
"His hiring also adds another outstanding coach to a league that has some of the top coaches in the country. He will do great things for the Razorbacks.”
An Arkansas media liaison did not respond to an email seeking an interview with Neighbors on Monday, but he published an essay on the Razorbacks' website.
"When I hear my name introduced, there will be a lot of people that will tell me my grandad would have been proud," Neighbors wrote. "I know how much this means to my family."
Sources with knowledge of the search indicated Neighbors was Arkansas' top target after Jimmy Dykes resigned as the team's coach last month. Blair said Neighbors interviewed for the Arkansas job before Dykes was hired in 2014.
Dykes finished his tenure with a 43-49 record, including a 13-17 record this year when the Razorbacks ended on an 11-game losing streak.
"It was vitally important to our search committee and to me that we attract someone who is entrenched in the women's game and someone who has demonstrated the ability to connect with our young women on and off the court," Arkansas athletics director Jeff Long said in a statement announcing Neighbors' hiring.
"He is a member of an elite group of coaches who have taken a team to the Final Four and that is the kind of leader we need in the strongest conference in women's basketball."
Neighbors is the second Arkansas head coach with ties to Blair, who left in 2003 after advancing to five NCAA Tournaments in 10 seasons. Tom Collen, a four-year Blair assistant, coached the Razorbacks for seven seasons before he was fired in 2014.
Neighbors will be the fourth coach to attempt to revive the success and fan support Arkansas enjoyed under Blair. In the 14 seasons since he left, the Razorbacks have made the NCAA Tournament twice - under Collen in 2012 and in Dykes' first season in 2015.
"All those fans that we used to draw in '98 when we went to the Final Four and in '99 when we won the WNIT championship, they're not dead," Blair said. "Ninety-eight percent of them are still alive and they're just waiting for something to get started again, and to build the Razorback program back. It can be done."
Neighbors is known as a strong recruiter, which Blair said is an essential attribute for the Arkansas job. Neighbors has helped sign nine McDonald's All-Americans as an assistant or head coach.
His first recruiting class at Washington included two players - Kelsey Plum and Chantel Osahor - who eventually became All-Americans. Plum was the consensus national player of the year this season and broke the NCAA's career scoring record.
"In Arkansas there are good players, but can you close the door when there is a great player like Malik Monk on the men's side," Blair said.
"It's going to take that type of coach that is going to be so good in the living room, but then can back it up on the court. Mike probably isn't going to be able to get it done in his first year, but you give him time and I'll promise you they'll be a consistent NCAA team just like we were in our 10 years there."