University of Georgia Athletics
Country Still in the Boy for Landers
March 30, 2015 | Women's Basketball
Finding Andy Landers down on the farm will be more of a recurring circumstance now that he has retired his coaching whistle. Laid-back living for him began in Maryville, Tenn., a little more than a stone's throw from the famous Blackberry Farm, which began its reach toward regional prominence about the time Landers showed up at Georgia to coach the Lady Dogs basketball team.
More than three decades ago, Georgia was about as much of a basketball wilderness as the Great Smokey Mountains (in Davy Crockett's time), which Andy could see when he walked the family farm, thinking of coaching big-time basketball. He didn't mind the hard work that came from life on the farm, which brought vegetables to the kitchen table, which was graced with sweet ice tea--which Andy would ask for if he were invited to dinner at the 21 Club in New York.
He never wanted to take the boy out of the country. For sure, he never wanted to take the country out of the boy--so he found a way to buy acreage in Oconee County as soon as he could afford it. Work the land. Buy some cattle, expand the herd. Grow a garden. Enjoy the good life. He found a way to do all this while coaching the Georgia women's basketball to national prominence.
Hard to collect more hardware than Andy Landers has collected in his 36 year career as the Bulldogs' head coach of women's basketball. His trophy case is bigger than the post office in Maryville--but when his cows come home, they have no interest in all that, which is why he should be able to handle retirement. No doubt he will miss the action and the joyful noise. (You think Peyton Manning is coming back for at least one more season for a few more million. Forget that--he wants to play.) It was not an easy thing for Landers to do when he heard the last ball strip the net in Stegeman Hall, which was like a ghost town when he showed up as head coach as a 26-year-old who had already proven himself at Rhone State.
Not even the man who hired him, Vince Dooley, was clairvoyant. Nobody could have foreseen the wine and roses tenure that was to follow: 23 NCAA tournament invitations, five Final Fours, seven SEC championships, four SEC tournament titles, and 21 seasons in which he won 20 or more games. He would be elected to the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame. His final box score reads 903 wins and only 306 losses. That is something to write home about.
Growing up in East Tennessee, Landers became addicted to basketball as a kid in Maryville. Basketball was good, but the main attraction was always the girls' competition. At his high school there was an interesting phenomenon. The typical doubleheader had the boys playing first and the girls last. If you had played the girls' game first, everybody would have walked out of the gym when the girls finished. Andy played and then stayed around to see the girls' game. Afterwards, he would walk home, a distance of about three miles, often in the pitch-black night, nervous at every sound. "You could have shouted, and I'd have set a world record sprinting home," he remembers.
With his exposure and experience, it was only natural that Andy would choose the coaching profession. There was a familial influence, too, in that his uncle A. J. Wilson was a girls' head coach. Wilson coached the girls' team at Walland High, taking his team to the state finals 13 times. On one of those lonely nights when he was walking home after seeing a thrilling girls 'game, he thought to himself, "I'd like to do that."
Away from the competition, you find Andy a playful raconteur. His jaw is not set, as it is during a game. He enjoys a brush with the light side. He is given to needling and bringing levity to any conversation.
Losing never set well with this slicked-back-black-haired fellow who considered intensity as much a part of coaching as tax considerations are for a small-time cattle farmer. We are going to miss his scowl in down times and his cleverness in victory, appreciating that he established a winning tradition at Stegeman Coliseum that will benefit Georgia with the passing of time. Selah!
