The University of Maine made a splash this past week in hiring Richard Barron as its women’s basketball coach.

His hiring not only moves the basketball program forward, but it ends a tie with former state basketball star Cindy Blodgett, which needed to be cut.

Blodgett will always be remembered as one of the best basketball players from Maine. She should be applauded for her contributions to the sport as a player at Lawrence High School and as a pivotal marksman for the University of Maine teams that reached the NCAA Tournament four straight times with her leading the way in the late 1990s.

Blodgett helped give the program a name on the national stage and made the America East Conference, in which UMaine plays, into a powerhouse.

She also is the only Maine player to have played in the Women’s National Basketball Association.

As a coach, however, Blodgett’s success as a player did not translate into the effective management of the women’s basketball team at UMaine.

In four seasons with the University of Maine, she led the team to a 24-94 record since taking over for Ann McInerney in 2007.

UMaine Athletics Director Steve Abbott fired Blodgett in March and said at the time it was a “difficult decision.” It’s always difficult to fire someone who is immortalized for stellar play at a school, but Abbott’s decision was the correct one. Shortly after her firing, Blodgett said she felt betrayed. She should have seen the firing coming as 24 wins in four years will not create job security for a college coach at any school.

Now the university is moving on from the Blodgett years with Barron’s hiring. He has spent the past two seasons as an assistant coach at North Carolina State and rebuilt the program at Princeton before heading to Baylor. He posted a 77-48 record at Princeton after inheriting a program that had not had a winning record in a decade.

He led Baylor to a 54-13 record and two trips to the NCAA tournament.

Those are large schools in larger conferences than UMaine plays, and he brings that experience with him to Orono.

It won’t be easy to rebuild the team, but Barron is confident he can do it, saying earlier this week that this is “what he’s good at.”

For Maine’s sake, let’s hope it is something at which he continues to excel.

The University of Maine is a proud program where thousands of fans used to flock to the Alfond Arena on a cold winter’s night to see the team play. It even attracted schools to the campus from bigger programs such as Western Kentucky University. Besides the hockey team, UMaine’s women’s team was a legitimate draw, even outdrawing the men’s team by thousands of fans per game. That doesn’t happen very often at many schools.

Barron has proven that he can bring teams back from despair. Time will tell if he can do it at UMaine, but at least a step in the right direction has been made.

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Questions? Comments? Contact Managing Editor Kristen Schulze Muszynski by calling 282-1535, Ext. 322, or via e-mail at kristenm@journaltribune.com.