Lynette Woodard was the first female Kansas University basketball player to have her jersey retired. She was the first female member of the KU Sports Hall of Fame.

Now Woodard is the first woman with KU ties to be named to the prestigious Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

Woodard, who scored nearly 3,700 points during her four-year college career (1978-81) and later became the first woman to play for the legendary Harlem Globetrotters, was among six named Monday for inclusion in Springfield, Mass., shrine.

“This is magical,” Woodard said while in San Antonio for the announcement of this year’s class. “I can’t sit down.”

Also named Monday from a group of 16 finalists were Clyde Drexler, Bill Sharman, Maurice Stokes, Jerry Colangelo and Drazen Dalipagic. Drexler and Woodard made it in their first year of eligibility.

Woodard, a Wichita North product, averaged about 26 points a game while playing for the Jayhawks. As a senior, she won the Ward Trophy that annually goes to the top women’s basketball player in the country. She also won a gold medal as a member of the 1984 U.S. Olympics team.

Woodard joined the KU coaching staff in 1999 under mentor Marian Washington after wrapping up a two-year career in the WNBA. When Washington took a leave of absence for medical reasons in late January, Woodard was tapped as interim coach by athletic director Lew Perkins.

However, when Washington announced her retirement in February, Perkins passed over Woodard and hired Bonnie Henrickson of Virginia Tech to take over the program.

Woodard has been linked with the Phoenix Mercury vacancy. The WNBA team is expected to name a new coach before the league’s player draft April 17.

Soon-to-be inductees into the basketball hall of fame, from left, Bill Sharman, Lynette Woodard, Jerry Colangelo and Clyde Drexler, hold up their jerseys during a ceremony. The group, which was introduced Monday in San Antonio, will be enshrined Sept. 10 in Springfield, Mass.

Woodard becomes the 15th person with KU ties to join the Naismith Hall of Fame. That’s more than any other NCAA Division One school.

Others with KU backgrounds in the Naismith shrine include such legends as James Naismith, Phog Allen, Adolph Rupp, Wilt Chamberlain, Dean Smith and Ralph Miller.

Larry Brown, who guided Kansas to the 1988 NCAA championship, was the last Kansas honoree. Brown’s selection in 2002 snapped a 14-year KU drought. No KU products had been tapped since Miller and Clyde Lovellette, wheelhorse of the 1952 NCAA championship team, were chosen in 1988.

Colangelo, owner of the Phoenix Suns of the NBA and baseball’s Arizona Diamondbacks, has an obscure tie to the Jayhawks. Colangelo spent his freshman year at KU (1957-58), but transferred to Illinois and played for the Fighting Illini from 1960 to ’62, earning All-Big 10 honors in 1961.

Colangelo left KU because he had hoped to play with Wilt Chamberlain, but Chamberlain joined the Harlem Globetrotters after his junior season in 1957-58 — the same school year Colangelo was a freshman. Freshmen were ineligible for varsity competition at the time.

Colangelo is a four-time NBA executive of the year and also was instrumental in creating the WNBA.

— The Associated Press contributed information for this story.