BLUFFTON, Ohio – When Head Coach Guy Neal walked off the Sommer Center floor for the final time at the end of the 2022-23 season he took with him many records that will never be touched by any men's basketball coach at Bluffton University, but more importantly, he left a legacy of giving back exponentially more than he ever took. Bluffton could never compensate the man for what he gave of himself. Where he drew his largest paycheck was the Bluffton Brotherhood he built one stone at a time. He brought over 300 student-athletes to Bluffton and his legacy of hard work, discipline and love will go on forever. Over 50 members of that Bluffton Brotherhood have gone on to become coaches themselves, taking the lessons they learned and passing them on to scores of student-athletes at all levels!
Guy played collegiately at both North Carolina-Charlotte and Bowling Green State University, where he met his wife, Diane, before assistant coaching stints at Baldwin Wallace, Van Wert High School and Ashland High school. In 1989 a door opened at Bluffton College and that's where this story begins. While Coach Neal thought Bluffton would be another quick stop in his coaching journey, that would not be the case! Diane accepted a position as an instructor, Erin and Tyler entered their family, and 34 years after taking over a program that was considered a graveyard for coaches, Neal capped off a historic career that saw the Beavers win over 390 games.
In just his third season at Bluffton, Coach Neal led the Beavers to a 16-10 mark, kicking off a five-year stretch that saw his men place second in the AMC three times. He was named the AMC Coach of the Year and Bluffton's 16-10 record that season marked a plus-12 turnaround in wins from the previous season, a mark that drew national recognition as well. Neal took the Beavers back to the AMC championship game three seasons later in 1994-95.
Two years after the AMC folded up, Bluffton joined a blossoming Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference that was made up of schools from both Indiana and Ohio. Transylvania, from Kentucky, made it three states before Rose-Hulman and Earlham capped off the 10-school league it has been for the past 15 years. He was quietly building an HCAC contender when the recruiting classes in 2002 and 2003 shifted the process into overdrive. It was on Dec. 29, 2003 when Coach Neal won game 151, surpassing Glenn Snyder as the all-time winningest coach in Bluffton history. With 394 career victories on his resume, Neal has more than doubled Snyder and he has won nearly 150 just since moving into the Sommer Center for the 2012-13 season!
Scott Bergman and Eric Sweet became household names in Bluffton before Mike Anthony and Eric Schwieterman gave the Beavers a starting lineup that made life miserable on opponents. Bergman, the 2004-05 HCAC Player of the Year and an All-American, went off for 50 points against Anderson his junior year and he followed that up with 43 on 'Fill Founders Night' a year later when the senior hit 9-of-12 from just outside Marbeck Center!
Following the Beavers' record-breaking 2006-07 campaign, a season in which he notched career victory #200 at home against Rose-Hulman, Neal collected his second HCAC Coach of the Year award. For the third consecutive year, the Beavers reached the semi-finals of the Heartland Conference tournament. Bluffton was a perfect 12-0 in Founders Hall on its way to a tie for second place in the HCAC regular season. The 18 wins equaled the most ever by a men's basketball team at Bluffton. It also marked the second straight season that the Beavers found themselves in the D3hoops.com Top 25 national poll! In addition, Neal directed the HCAC Player of the Year for the second time in three seasons, as Mike Anthony took home the top individual honor in the conference.
In 2009, another Neal joined the Bluffton Brotherhood when Tyler made the decision to play for his Dad. After years of rooting on the Beavers from the stage, Tyler was part of the final team that would play in Founders and his senior year he got to show off his talents in the newly-minted Sommer Center. Neal made a living doling out assists to Bluffton's three-headed monster in the post during his final season. Juniors Will Pope and Dustin Kinn, along with freshman Thayne Recker made life miserable for opponents around the basket as the Beavers took full advantage of their advantage, pounding the ball inside!
Recker cemented his All-American status with a school and HCAC-record 53 points that included a school record in free throws made (25) and FT attempted (28) in a game as Bluffton won a triple-overtime instant classic, 103-102, on January 31, 2015! The 2014-15 squad caught lightning in a bottle, downing Transylvania in overtime on the final Saturday of the season to notch a berth in the HCAC Tournament before topping Anderson in double overtime and #2 seed MSJ 64-62 in the conference semifinals for Bluffton's first-ever berth in the Heartland championship game. The OT victory at Lexington was #300 for Guy who was battling his long-time friend and rival, Brian Lane, in what was for all intents and purposes an HCAC tournament play-in game.
While 300 wins is a monumental number for a head coach at any level, Coach Neal refused to slow down and he continued to churn out victories at an impressive pace. The Beavers played in four straight conference tournaments from 2017 through 2020, winning 10 consecutive games in 2019-20 when most of the country was on the sidelines due to COVID-19. Bluffton went 55-40 over those four years, making it to the semifinals of the Heartland Conference Tournament in 2018-19.
His career at Bluffton has yielded a few numbers that seem incomprehensible in an era where coaches change jobs like they change their underwear. Prior to stepping down after 34 years at the helm, he was the longest tenured collegiate coach in Ohio and there were only two Division I coaches in the nation with longer runs at their respective schools: Jim Boeheim at Syracuse (44 years), who has since retired, and Greg Kampe at Oakland (38 years). Coach Neal saw 15 of his players score over 1,000 points at Bluffton and players that he coached have led their own high school programs to state championships. Another number that defies logic is that the other nine members of the HCAC had no fewer than 40 head coaches during Neal's tenure at Bluffton!
But all the nearly 400 wins pale in comparison to the legacy he leaves at Bluffton University as an educator. He ran a tight ship and held every student and student-athlete to the high standard that he himself maintained. I have had the great fortune to be seated less than 10 feet from his work area on Wednesdays and Saturdays the past 18 years and I am eternally grateful that he was the first professor I had when I came back to school in 2002. Coach Neal was my student teaching supervisor and his wife, Diane, was also an instructor that paved the way for me into the field of higher education. They have made Bluffton what it is as evidenced by the outpouring of love and emotion at the final Alumni Game with Coach Neal on the sidelines.
Words will never be enough, but THANK YOU to Guy, Diane, Erin, Tyler and your growing family for all the blood, sweat and tears you poured into Bluffton University and the Bluffton Brotherhood. Bluffton Basketball and the Neal Family will be forever linked and all of us who have had the opportunity to call you friends are better for it!
-BEAVERS-