Arkansas women's basketball coach Mike Neighbors resigned Tuesday after eight years at the helm of his alma mater.
"For me, being a Razorback, one day being the head coach would have been plenty," Neighbors told ESPN. "I think I got to coach 2,898 days. So I'll look at it in its entirety."
Neighbors, who previously led the University of Washington to a 2016 Final Four appearance behind star player Kelsey Plum, went 148-114 during his time in Fayetteville and guided the Razorbacks to six postseason appearances.
"I'll walk out of here shoulders back, chin up. ... Being from this state, I've been a Razorback since I was 5. ... It's hard, but we ask kids to do hard things all the time," he said.
Neighbors, 55, admitted his teams didn't win enough toward the end, with the Razorbacks finishing the 2024-25 campaign 10-22 and 3-13 in SEC play, tied for last in the conference.
But "there's a lot of people trying to make me feel bad about the way it ended and the way it all went," he said, adding, "They're going have a hard time. I can tell you that."
Neighbors led Arkansas to NCAA tournament appearances in 2021 (as a No. 4 seed) and 2022, the program's first berths since 2015 and first consecutive trips in nearly 20 years. His best season came in 2019-20 -- which saw March Madness cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic -- when the team went 24-8 and finished tied for third in the SEC.
Neighbors came to the program in 2017 following four years at Washington, where he led the Huskies to three NCAA tournament appearances and guided Plum on her run to becoming Division I women's basketball's all-time leading scorer.
"I am deeply appreciative of Coach Neighbors and his contributions to the University of Arkansas and our program during the past eight seasons," Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek said in a statement. "There is no questioning his love and passion for this university and this state. After a successful run at the University of Washington, he returned to his home state to take on the challenge of competing in the nation's most challenging conference. During his tenure, we enjoyed numerous memorable wins and watched some of the best players in the history of our program."
A national search for the next women's basketball coach will begin immediately, the school said.
After an 18-15 run last year, Arkansas lost four of its starters to the transfer portal and a fifth to graduation, leaving Neighbors with a group of mostly underclassmen in arguably the best conference in the country. The SEC is projected to get 10 teams in the NCAA tournament with six hosting.
"I think with the changing climate in college sports, none of us could be fully prepared," Neighbors said. "I had a plan, and two weeks later it was an obsolete plan, and then you start another plan, and two weeks later it's an obsolete plan. That's just the nature of the sport right now. It's changing."
Arkansas isn't the only SEC school searching for a new head coach. Johnnie Harris was fired after four seasons at Auburn, while Robin Pingeton announced in February that she would resign at the end of the campaign following 15 years at Missouri.
Neighbors, who serves on the Women's Basketball Coaches Association board of directors, said he hopes to continue coaching and find a program "really committed to women's basketball."
"I got into women's basketball over 30 years ago as a high school coach," Neighbors said. "I'm not one of those people that found it along the way, when it didn't work out for me another sport or another business. ... I'm nowhere close to giving up."