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Thursday, March 28, 2024

The saga continues

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Hometown basketball star Jason Gardner is set to reach yet another milestone in his impressive athletic career.

It was recently announced that Gardner, currently assistant men’s basketball coach at Loyola University in Chicago, will be inducted in the exclusive Pac-12 Men’s Basketball Hall of Honor later this month.

Gardner will be inducted on March 16 during a special ceremony before the Pac-12 Men’s Basketball Tournament in Las Vegas. He will represent the University of Arizona, which he led to the national tournament with 107-29 record in 2001, as well as two Pac-10 regular season championships.

Gardner said he was actually surprised by the honor and perhaps underestimated its magnitude at first, since he always had a team concept to his playing instead of an individual one, emphasizing team honors over individual titles.

“Honestly, I didn’t realize how major it is until I sat down and looked up who is in the Hall of Honor,” he said. “I was looking at people like Reggie Miller, Kareem Abdul-Jabaar, David Stoudemire and I’m like, this thing is really kind of serious. I called the guys at Arizona and said, ‘I guess I have to wear a suit and tie to this, right?’”

Induction into the Pac-12 Hall of Honor is definitely a crowning achievement for the Indianapolis native, who graduated from North Central High School and was part of its 1999 state championship winning team. He also earned the Mr. Basketball Award that year, and was named both a McDonald’s and Parade All-American.

At Arizona, Gardner, a point guard was named the 2000 National Freshman of the Year and the 2003 Frances Pomeroy Naismith Player of the Year.

Gardner earned All-America honors 12 times during his Arizona years, and finished as one of just four players in Pac-10 history to amass 1,500 career points, 500 assists and 200 steals. He was the highest-scoring guard in Arizona history and third highest overall with 1,984 career points.

After graduation from Arizona, Gardner, surprisingly, was not drafted in the NBA, but did join a growing number of American players who have taken their skills to an international level, playing professionally for seven years in Slovenia, Belgium, Israel and Germany.

Most of Gardner’s professional career was spent in Germany, where he played in Basketball Bundesliga League (BBL), the country’s highest-level club, participated in two All-Star games and was named the MVP for the 2008-09 season.

Gardner returned to the United States to pursue his lifelong goal of coaching, and briefly served as assistant coach at Cathedral High School before accepting his current position at Loyola in 2011.

Gardner has received credit for helping to shore up Loyola’s program. In his first year, he helped forward Ben Averkamp develop into a Second Team All-Horizon League selection as Loyola produced its first all-conference player in five years. In addition, the team has doubled its winning games compared to last season, improved its offensive strategy and landed one of the top recruiting classes in the Horizon League.

Gardner said he has enjoyed making the transition from being a player to a coach, which he says has enabled him to help build a solid foundation of success for students.

“As a coach you have opportunities to put them in situations where they can become better, and that’s exciting,” Gardner said.

Gardner’s highest goal is to be a college or NBA coach, but doesn’t rule out a return to professional playing.

“You just never know when another great opportunity might come, and when it does, you at least want to look at it and see how it can help you reach your goal,” Gardner said.

Loyola head coach Porter Moser said Gardner is definitely deserving of the Pac-12 honor and has been impressed with abilities as both a player and a coach.

“Jason is a high-character, humble human being. He has that ‘it’ factor where he has all of the talent and the intangibles to be successful,” Moser stated. “As a player, Jason brings a tremendous amount of credibility because he has been where all of our players want to go. Earning a spot in a school’s hall of fame is impressive and difficult enough, but when you think about being inducted into a BCS conference’s hall of fame, you realize that you truly are in select company.”

Gardner credits his family, especially his older brother and father, as well as North Central coach Doug Mitchell and Arizona coach Lute Olsen for his development as an athlete and person.

“They all gave me inspiration and also deserve credit for this,” Gardner said.

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