University of Arkansas Vice Chancellor and Director of Athletics Jeff Long has announced the hiring of Mike Neighbors as the ninth coach in Arkansas women’s basketball history on Monday. Neighbors returns to his alma mater after four seasons as the head coach at the University of Washington where he led the Huskies to their first-ever Final Four.

“I am excited to welcome Coach Neighbors back to his home state and back to his alma mater the University of Arkansas,” Long said. “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. Mike Neighbors has spent his career teaching, coaching and mentoring young women dating back to his time as a high school coach in Arkansas. 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. I know that Mike’s energy and excitement about being a Razorback will inspire our student-athletes and our fans.”

“To Mike: A future Razorback All-American.”

That was the message inside the first book my grandad gave me when I was 10 years old. That book was “Hog Wild” and that message happened to be written and autographed by then Arkansas Athletic Director and former Head Football Coach Frank Broyles, who the book was about.

My grandparents would take a different grandchild to each Razorback home football game. They didn’t have season tickets for all of us and on one of those trips my grandad got the book.

Always wearing red and usually wearing my No. 32 jersey (I loved Sydney Moncrief), I tried really hard in baseball and in basketball. I even tried football, but I knew that wasn’t going to work out for me. I wasn’t good enough to be a Razorback All-American.

For as long as I can remember, it was always my dream to grow up to be a Razorback. Once that didn’t happen it became ‘Well, let’s be a coach. Let’s be an All-American-type coach at the University of Arkansas.’

That became the dream.