She has broken down barriers not only as a player, but also as a coach.

Former Georgia basketball All-American Bernadette Locke-Mattox will join the likes of Vince Dooley, Teresa Edwards and other elite Bulldogs in the University of Georgia Circle of Honor, as she is one of four to be inducted Friday.

“Being inducted into the Circle of Honor at Georgia is absolutely the ultimate to be a part of that circle of people,” Mattox said. “The achievements that they have acquired are just unbelievable. To put my name beside theirs is just an absolute honor.”

In 1979, Roane State Community College watched two greats walk away from that Harriman, Tenn., campus to become part of the Bulldog Nation. Andy Landers stepped in as the head coach of the Lady Dogs basketball squad that year and was followed to Athens by Mattox.

After quickly establishing herself as a threat on the hardwood, Mattox became Georgia’s first female athlete to be named an All-American during her junior year in 1980 after a season in which she averaged 20.6 points per game and 4.6 assists per game.

“She was one of my junior college players, and she came here with me; [she] was a very good player but moreover was a very, very good person and an excellent student,” Landers said.

Following her career as a college player, Mattox joined the Lady Dogs staff as a graduate assistant and an academic counselor before then becoming a full-fledged assistant coach from 1985-1990.

Landers credits Mattox in recruiting top high school players during her time with the Lady Dogs as well as playing a large role in the transformation of the women’s basketball program at Georgia.

“As a coach, she helped us recruit key players in the early years to take Georgia from basically a program in a nonexistent state or stage to national promise,” Landers said. “She’s been such a big part of Georgia basketball, I finally referred to her as the ‘First Lady of Georgia basketball.’”

Mattox then found herself away from Athens but still in SEC territory as she charted new waters.

In 1990, then head coach Rick Pitino offered Mattox a position as an assistant coach for the Kentucky men’s basketball team, making her the first female to coach at the Division I level for a men’s team.

Mattox moved back to the women’s side of the game in 1995 as she was named head coach of the Kentucky women’s basketball team.

“Because of the different coaches I have been around, you take a piece from everybody. As you get older, you learn how to deal with young people differently because generations change,” Mattox said. “You learn bits and pieces from the different people that you’re around. Let them know what’s important, and you also be a model for that. You can’t talk about it unless you live that.”

Mattox was an assistant coach on the 1998 USA World Championship team that went 9-0.

Now at the professional level as an assistant coach for the Connecticut Sun, Mattox looks back on her vast accomplishments seldom, as she accredits her hard work for those feats.

“As an individual, I don’t go back and look at all of [my] accomplishments. I think that’s part of life in that the hard work is put into what you do,” Mattox said.