Karen Blair named new GT Women’s Basketball Head Coach

The 7th head coach in program history

Georgia Tech Women’s Basketball announced this morning the hiring Karen Blair as their new head coach to replace the recently retired Nell Fortner.

Blair comes from the University of Maryland where she’s served as the associate head coach under Brenda Frese for the last five seasons, and has been on Maryland’s coaching bench for the last seven. Maryland made the NCAA Tournament in all seven of those seasons (aside from 2020’s cancelled tournament).

“Coach Blair is the right person to build on Georgia Tech women’s basketball’s legacy of success,” said Georgia Tech Athletic Director J Batt in the press release.

This is Blair’s first full-time head coaching job. She was the interim head coach for eight games in 2013 at UT-Arlington.

What sticks out to us not only is the run of success she’s played a role in at Maryland, but also the recruiting success she’s spearheaded. Blair is noted in the press release as being one of best recruiters in the country, backed up by Maryland getting top 10 recruiting classes in in 2019, 2021, and 2023. Knowing Tech currently only has four players on the roster (Tonie Morgan, Ines Noguero, Chit-Chat Wright, D’Asia Thomas-Harris), building up a recruiting pipeline to Tech will be critical infrastructure to attack on day one.

In previous stops, Blair was an associate head coach at VCU and an assistant coach at North Texas, UT-Arlington, Colgate, and SMU. She was a starting point guard for the Mustangs until her graduation in 1999, where she then coached for 10 years.

So, what does this mean for Georgia Tech? Of course, there’s still lots to be answered when it comes to who exactly will be playing for the Jackets in 2025-26. The entire bench hit the transfer portal in the days leading up to Fortner’s announced retirement. Our former associate head coach, Blanche Alverson, got the head coaching job at San Diego. The ACC is not getting any easier, but plenty of players are transferring within the conference. If anything, we have to imagine Blair is already figuring out who in the transfer portal is open to coming to play at Tech. Getting a solid group of players in the immediate days is a necessary task in getting Tech to maybe approaching the success they had for the majority of last season.

Personally, my biggest hope is that the remaining players that have built the core of this team stick it out with Blair. Changing coaches is not an easy transition, especially for those who were recruited by a different coach. The portal is always right here, giving them an opportunity to maybe play on a team with a better tournament outlook than Tech, but for now, they’re still here, and getting one more year to be a fan of Morgan, Noguero, and Dunn would be a thrill. Much is to be seen about this next chapter in Georgia Tech women’s basketball history.

Let us know your thoughts on the hire in the comments!

Editor’s note: the original version of this story incorrectly listed Kara Dunn as not having entered the transfer portal. She is in the transfer portal as of April 1.