Texas at Texas Tech Tuesday Feb 1st, 2022 ESPN2 8pm CT

[KingBobo81 526]

There will be hate. It will be hype. Get ready, because Chris Beard is coming back to Texas Tech

 

Spoiler

 

There will be hate. It will be hype. Get ready, because Chris Beard is coming back to Texas Tech

Brian Hamilton Feb 1, 2022 41 

LUBBOCK, Texas — It’s a few minutes past noon on an overcast Sunday in West Texas, and all’s quiet on the eastern front of United Supermarkets Arena. A communal stack of water bottle 40-packs and jumbo boxes of Clif Bars and Kirkland-brand nut bars sits unattended at the bottom of a ramp. Around the corner, steps away, the tent line begins. Dozens of them, already. The line started at halftime of a basketball game the previous night. The tent folk are students waiting for a basketball game that doesn’t tip off for another two and a half days. They have tickets. They’re guaranteed to get in, even if they walked up the ramp to the southeast doors a few minutes before tipoff. They don’t need to be here.

But, see, they really need to be here.

On Tuesday, Texas Tech hosts Texas. More to the point, Texas Tech hosts a team coached by the former coach at Texas Tech, whom everyone in this line expected to be in Lubbock forever, only to watch him make the one decision no one can swallow hard and choke down. This is a colony of simmering rage, drawing on a bile tank nine months deep. Being at the front of this line, right now, means you get to run in first and grab the general-admission seats closest to the visitor’s bench and spend the following hours giving that coach a piece of your resentful, bitter, expletive-saturated mind.

“There’s only one Chris Beard coming-home game,” says Blake Johnson, a sophomore from Fort Worth, one of eight friends occupying two tents at the very start of the line. “It’s going to be absolutely insane. People are not happy with him.”

No, they are not. Without exaggeration, these unhappy people may create one of the most poisonous atmospheres for a visiting coach college basketball has seen, maybe ever. It’s worth noting some people here, the current head coach included, still consider Beard a friend. Former players haven’t forgotten one hell of a ride and don’t begrudge their old coach much of anything. But the success and visibility and program growth Beard helped forge — one Elite Eight, the national title game appearance, a $32 million practice facility for men’s and women’s basketball — will be irrelevant to most of the sell-out audience on Tuesday. It’s a betrayal, as they see it. This is their catharsis.

“There’s a lot of pride on the line in this game,” says Tariq Owens, a member of Texas Tech’s 2019 Final Four team who planned his return for this game as soon as Beard switched gigs. “Pride of the town. The school. The team. There’s a lot being played for in this game. It definitely has a different feel to it.”

In the tent line, more than two days out, Johnson and his seven fellow campers wait. They’ve planned this campout since August. They have soup and an empty pizza box and hurt feelings — “I think he’s just a dirty snake, to be honest,” sophomore Marcus Morgan says of the former coach — and while they don’t know how they’ll rotate out to attend class, they do know they’re not supposed to throw things Tuesday night. The rest is fair game. Chris Beard is coming back, and they’re coming for him.

“God, just so much hate will be coming out of this arena,” says Mary Allison Tannos, the president of the Raider Riot student section group. “But it’s going to be so hype.”

---

In October 2019, five months removed from Texas Tech men’s basketball coming tantalizingly close to its absolute zenith, Dusty Womble held a Dos Equis bottle as he gave fellow Red Raiders supporters and donors a tour of a concrete slab with steel beams shooting into the sky. The first Final Four in program history was a fresh memory. The disappointment of a national championship game loss to Virginia, in overtime, had thinned enough to reveal the auspicious path forward. Nothing exemplified this better than the state-of-the-art, no-corners-cut practice facility under construction at that very moment, a place with no walls and no ceiling that left everything to the visitors’ imagination; the Dustin R. Womble Basketball Center was a sign, in every interpretation, of things to come.

Beard hopped in midway through the tour that day. He’d led the program to a place it had never been. His success and energy and salesmanship created the momentum for a basketball-only facility without peer anywhere in the country. He was the star of this show. That concrete under his feet might as well have been water.

A year and a half later, Womble and his wife, Leisha, were at the fire pit when a couple neighbors arrived. Beard and his fiancee, Randi, were out for an evening stroll and dropped by to talk. During the next two hours, give or take, Womble served as a sounding board as Texas Tech’s head coach talked through a tough choice that might come his way. As Womble thinks back on that conversation now — perhaps Beard’s final fireside chat in Lubbock — he realizes his friend probably was trying to justify a decision he’d already made, one that would make him the most hated man in town. “He was one of us,” Womble says, sitting in an arena media room during a Red Raiders women’s hoops game. “There are guys that have gotten ‘4:1’ tattoos because of Chris. There were people that really emotionally invested so much in the program, and then for Chris to decide he was going to leave Texas Tech and go to Texas, it was just very personal to so much of our fan base.

“I didn’t feel that way. But I also don’t have a 4:1 tattoo on my shoulder, you know?”

How did we get here? It’s a dynamic with a little more gradation to it than a coach deciding to go to Texas, of all places.

But the Texas part is definitely a problem.

It’s the eternally open wound for Texas Tech supporters. Never mind the obvious and antagonistic competitive interests of in-state rivals. That isn’t the half of it. Texas looks down on everyone, you see. The big school in the state capital with the biggest budget causes the biggest problems for everyone else in its orbit, with no regard for anything but what’s best for the University of Texas at Austin. Texas destroyed the Southwest Conference. Texas almost destroyed the Big 12. Texas is running off to the SEC. Texas gets the preferential treatment on- and off-field despite all that, if you really pay attention, now. A century-long litany.

As a result, the act of choosing Texas over Texas Tech, to this sector of the college athletics world, is a character flaw. A direct hit to some latent insecurities. It could have been Kentucky. It could have been North Carolina. It could have been the NBA. It could have been anywhere else, and it would’ve hurt. But not like this. “Chris did a lot of good things,” athletic director Kirby Hocutt says. “But you can’t leave Texas Tech and go to Texas.”

From there, it gets a little more convoluted than changing ZIP codes.

To begin with, Texas Tech might be a better men’s basketball job than Texas. It was at least an arguable point in April 2021, and probably still is. The schools’ respective levels of interest in men’s basketball is not particularly close. Texas will have a new arena and its own new basketball facility in short order, but the latter won’t surpass the amenities of the Womble Center, which features, among other things, two 83-foot by 14-foot interactive video boards in each practice gym. Beard is making $5 million annually in base salary at Texas, but Texas Tech had offered Beard a compensation package that Womble says would be among the “top four or five” in the country and that Hocutt describes as a “lifetime contract,” a rollover deal with promises of continued investments in the program. He likened it to the one Auburn just announced for Bruce Pearl, which will pay Pearl north of $5 million a year. “We had done everything we could do,” Womble says. So the frustration about what followed is understandable. Beard called Hocutt, Womble and deputy director of athletics Tony Hernandez together on the morning of April 1 and confirmed that everything wasn’t enough. “What I didn’t know at that point was there had been a meeting at the McDonald’s in Plainview at 5 a.m. or whatever that day, Chris Del Conte was (there) and things were set up,” Hocutt says. “That bothers you. I believe it was probably a done deal before then. You just want honesty and transparency. If that’s where you want to go, just be up front and honest. But these situations are hard.”

Of that, there is no doubt. Sore feelings are guaranteed. And it’s probably too much to ask of a man consumed by basketball thoughts for every waking minute of his day to be self-conscious enough in the moment to apologize for leaving a school’s best offer on the table while acknowledging the psychological sledgehammer blow of jumping to a rival.

But, well, here we are at Texas Tech. “It’s not so much that he went to his alma mater,” says Tannos, a senior from Houston. “I think we can all kind of understand that. But it’s the fact that he was talking about future things so close before he left, and not saying anything to us when he left. It’s just kind of like, come on dude. Give us a little bit more than that, for a fan base that has been so loyal to you for so long.”

This brings us to the therapy-couch revelation underpinning all of this: Beard left those who loved him. He engaged and stoked his audience as effectively as any coach could. He was a Texas Tech assistant for 10 years under Bob Knight and then was tasked with reinvigorating the program and its fans as a head coach, and he knew every note to hit. The secret’s in the dirt, and so on. It’s not dishonest. It’s a coach understanding how to galvanize every facet of the operation, which is pretty much at the core of the job description. “He said, when Mama calls, you come home,” says Dennis Kruse, a Lubbock resident and 22-year season ticket-holder. “He brought everybody in.”

 

Chris Beard coached Texas Tech all the way to the national championship game in 2019, igniting the fan base in the process. (Robert Deutsch / USA Today)

The passion creating all the animosity is, in a very weird way, proof that Beard did his job exceptionally well. “I was there 15 years,” Beard said during his game preview news conference in Austin. “I gave it everything I had. I didn’t take one day off, mentally or physically in those 15 years. When I had the pleasure and honor to lead the program for five years, I gave it everything I had, every day. Our success together is real. It’s well-documented.” It is. It’s also agonizing for that exact reason. Kruse compares it to a divorce, one in which your spouse leaves you for someone you see every day. He’s not alone in that sentiment. When Tannos woke up to the news that Beard was leaving for Texas, she assumed it was a prank. When it became clear this was no laughing matter, she and a few of her friends matriculated to Teddy Jack’s Hub City Grill, to find comfort in greasy food and margaritas.

“It’s like breaking up with a boyfriend,” Tannos says. “Like, you do have a lot of good times together. But after that breakup, it’s not going to be the same. You’re going to have some hate for that person.”

So, in the end, it’s everything. It’s getting everyone to come aboard and then jumping ship. It’s making a community feel like its best isn’t good enough. It’s freaking Texas, of all places.

It’s enough to drive everyone mad, for one night in particular. “He asked a lot of the fans around here,” says Geoff Haxton, the play-by-play voice for Texas Tech men’s hoops. “And then it was gone. So when it goes to a personal thing, when it goes to betrayal, when it goes to those kinds of emotions — and then you put burnt orange on it? It just goes through the roof. That’s what we’re looking at.”

You might figure, then, that the guy who considered himself a close confidante of Beard, the guy with his name over the front door of that fantastic practice facility, would feel more put off than anyone.

Instead, Dusty Womble has a smile on his face.

“In some respects, we’re really happy,” he says. “I don’t know that we’d go back and change anything about what happened.”

---

Mark Adams is 21 games into his tenure as Texas Tech’s head men’s basketball coach, which is 21 games into the 41st year he’s coached college basketball at one level or another, and some of this is still a little new to him. His desk arrived four months ago. The smaller office table appeared last month. The coffee bar was installed maybe a week ago. The big surprise was the massive fixture installed on the wall behind the desk, the one with the backlit Texas Tech and Big 12 logos beneath COACH ADAMS glowing atop it all. He’s not sure who’s responsible for that addition. But as with everything else, he appreciates the support, even if it means he can’t quite escape the sensation that he owes something big in return.

“I like to please people,” Adams says, sipping from a red plastic cup, seated a few feet away from his name up in lights. “Probably adds a little bit of stress to me, because I’ve always not wanted to let people down. I wish I was the type of person that didn’t care what people thought. But I probably carry that a little too far.”

The next couple days should be straightforward. An in-state rival is coming to town. The conference season is at the turn, so to speak, adding more urgency to the game. Just about everyone Adams has met and everyone who’s wished him well since April has put a three-word asterisk on their sentiments — Just beat Texas — but it’s not like anyone in this job would be unclear about the need to do that twice a year. Yet there’s a difference between wanting to beat Texas and having to beat Texas. Nobody around here can stomach the thought of that one game going the other way this time. That is not straightforward. That is complicated for a coach whose early success is the one thing making this whole situation more acceptable for everyone in town, who is one of the few people within city limits who likes Chris Beard.

“My focus is obviously to win the next game, and try to keep this one in perspective,” Adams says. “We’ve been close, close friends for a long, long time. But we both have a job to do.”

 

Mark Adams, center, has kept the Red Raiders near the top of the Big 12 and No. 14 nationally. (Michael C. Johnson / USA Today)

It’s a lot. Or it’s the sort of burden a guy is used to carrying by now. “You see a calm, collected man pacing and leading on game days,” Hocutt says of his men’s hoops coach, “and you see a fighter in the locker room and at practice.”

Texas Tech has gone from empty offices, a skeleton staff and five total players on the roster to a spot as the No. 14 team in the country, and the easiest explanation for it is that Mark Adams leaned into being Mark Adams.

His team has the third-most efficient defense in the country, as of Monday morning. His players wear T-shirts with the slogan West Texas Tough emblazoned on the front, a re-embrace of the region’s identity directed by a once-upon-a-time Golden Gloves boxer who grew up 40 miles down the road in tiny Brownfield. “Mark Adams is everything that West Texas is all about,” says Kruse, the longtime season-ticket holder. Watch Adams run a film session on the day after a 26-point win over Mississippi State, and the honesty and direct delivery borders on hilarious. The Red Raiders listen intently as Adams leads the review of breakdowns that lead to middle drives and layups, bad switches and missed charges. Texas Tech thoroughly dominated a power-conference opponent, without a hint of look-ahead to the ground-shaking game that was next on the schedule, and the head coach is mystified about mental mistakes and his players looking tired. “We’re third in the country in defense, and we can be so much better,” Adams tells his group. “We’re not going to settle.”

It is not a wallow-in-misery session, to be clear: Everyone gets a kick out of a clip of forward Bryson Williams flailing his arms while taking a charge (“And the Oscar goes to…,” Adams quips from the side) and the meeting ends with “celebration” film of the previous night’s highlights, a reel kicked off with guard Adonis Arms’ face superimposed on pro wrestling star Shawn Michaels leaping off a ladder to deliver an elbow to a downed opponent bearing the Mississippi State logo. But winning is about eliminating the mistakes that cause you to lose, in Adams’ estimation. And a frank discussion about mistakes thematically falls in line with the message Adams gave his team before the first film clip rolled: Let’s stay level-headed. Let’s keep our feet on the ground. “He doesn’t want us to be satisfied,” forward Marcos Santos-Silva says. “He’s always on us.”

“When I see it, I say it,” Adams says in his office a few minutes later. “I just try to be transparent, because I want those guys to know where I’m coming from. At times, it may hurt their feelings. Sometimes they may not exactly like what I have to say, but they’re things that need to be said. I think they respect that. I’m impartial. I say it to everybody.”

It’s working, so far, to the delight of many around here. The top lieutenant gets the job and the operation doesn’t flounder. Texas Tech basketball keeps on keeping on, which permits everyone to convince themselves that Chris Beard wasn’t as important as Chris Beard thought he was. That Adams, the architect of the no-middle defense, was the key to everything.

How true or not true it is doesn’t matter; all that matters is that those partial to Texas Tech get to believe it. “I couldn’t feel better about where Texas Tech basketball is today, heading to the future,” Hocutt says.

Adams, meanwhile, seems to be a person who would simply like to coach a basketball game on Tuesday. It’s naive to think it doesn’t mean a little more — “I know coach Adams doesn’t talk about it, but there’s a lot of fire in there,” guard Clarence Nadolny says — and Adams does acknowledge the “drama” of the night. He knows people here are offended. He knows people here are hurt. He also is the guy who’s still in touch with the former head coach, who still occasionally discusses mutual opponents with the man whose chair he took over. He’s hopeful people will feel differently about Beard someday. He also knows that someday is not Feb. 1, 2022.

Just beat Texas, they tell him. It is what is. Mark Adams will aim to please. “Over time, obviously this whole animosity will diminish,” Texas Tech’s coach says. “But for the game on Tuesday, we know it won’t.”

---

 

In Lubbock they have a new head coach and are unified behind him. (Michael C. Johnson / USA Today)

It’s now a quarter past 7 p.m. on Sunday, and a Ford F-250 idles at the curb outside United Supermarkets Arena with its flashers on. There is pizza in the pickup. Lots of pizza. As stacks and stacks of boxes are unloaded onto a cart, the Texas Tech men’s basketball team makes its way down the southeast stairs, ready to deliver.

Before the players even reach the sidewalk, the first group of students leaps over a couple of sets of railings to get in position for pictures with Santos-Silva and Kevin Obanor. As Empire of the Sun’s “Walking On A Dream” plays from a party bus now stationed near the front of the tent line, and a light drizzle falls, the Red Raiders reach the pizza cart and turn toward an encampment now hundreds strong. For the next half-hour or so, the good times roll. Students are sated with Papa John’s slices and selfies. Aside from the “Horns Down” flashed by Jaylon Tyson in each shot — the freshman forward transferred from Texas after just eight games and now is enrolled at Texas Tech, the school he originally committed to — there’s no detectable fury bubbling in the area. “This is the best night of my life,” one camper declares, as she embarks on a quixotic mission to find Adams amid the crowd.

It is a happy scene. It is a fun scene. In roughly 48 hours’ time, it will be … different.

“Crazy,” guard Kevin McCullar says.

“Hostile,” Nadolny says.

“Pandemonium,” Kruse says.

“It’s going to be one of the best atmospheres that college basketball has seen in quite some time,” Hocutt says.

“We did what we did with coach Beard here,” Owens says. “It’s always going to be special. It’s always going to have a place in people’s hearts. But he’s not here no more. So now he has to play us. We’re in the Big 12. It’s another round in the fight.”

All the emotion will come to bear shortly before 8 p.m. here Tuesday, unleashed as soon as Chris Beard walks out of the tunnel for the first time as Texas’ coach. What happens next is anyone’s guess. It’s a fact that Beard didn’t return to Lubbock to pack up his belongings, harboring some concerns about what might happen if he did; whether there was actual reason for him to be concerned probably depends on your allegiances or how seriously you’d interpret the kind of venom sent his way last spring. Either way, Texas Tech planned for an increased security presence around the visitor’s bench before Texas even requested it. The tortilla shells tossed onto the field after the opening kickoff of football home games may or may not make an appearance. Nobody associated with the program Beard left behind wants anything remotely bad to happen — “At the end of the day, it’s just basketball,” Santos-Silva says — but neither has anyone ever dealt with the level of radioactivity Beard’s mere presence will cause.

“The last thing we need, college basketball needs, Texas Tech needs, is for somebody to put us in a bad light,” Womble says. “I hope we don’t have any issue other than the crowd is the most energized crowd we’ve ever had here.”

That’s the one sure thing for Tuesday night. Chris Beard is coming back to Lubbock. And everybody’s waiting.

 

[Satchel 6908]

3 hours ago, SL Xpress said:

 

Look, there are people claiming they want to know why Texas Tech fans are mad, but the truth is most of us don't really care. I don't care. Be mad.

That said, here are the reasons. They are very legitimate in the sense that human beings have natural reactions, and what the Tech fan base is going through feels pretty natural to me. But while I can understand, I don't care, because I don't have to.

So let's go through it.

The first thing to understand is Texas Tech's string of ineptitude. Gerald Myers was a damn good coach for 20 years from 1971 to 1991. James Dickey replaced him and had some very good seasons, including a 30-2 #3 seed and Sweet Sixteen appearance in 1996. However, widespread violations were found in the program the following year. The subsequent NCAA punishment gutted the program, and he was fired after 4 horrific seasons.

Gerald Myers was brought in as athletic director in 1996, and he hired legendary Bob Knight to be the basketball coach. Knight had a good run, because he's Bob Knight, but he never came close to the success he achieved at Indiana, because...well, it's Texas Tech. They did make a Sweet Sixteen in 2005 as a #6 seed by defeating #3 seed Gonzaga.

Bob Knight orchestrated his retirement in midseason in 2008 to ensure his son, Pat Knight, was named the head coach. Pat had a lackluster 3 seasons, failing to make the postseason each year before he was terminated.

Since they had so much success helping to partially rehabilitate Bob Knight's lasting image of being fired from Indiana, they decided to try with Billy Gillispie after his drunken sprawl across Lexington. That, however, only lasted on season after which he was fired for locking players in an electrical closet. No, wait. That was somebody else. Anyway, he was fired.

Because Joe B Hall and and Eddie Sutton weren't available, Tech chose to go after another Kentucky retread in Tubby Smith, having just been fired by Minnesota, and so conveniently looking for work. In Tubby's third year Tech finally made it back to the NCAA tournament after 9 long years. Immediately after that Tubby Smith quickly put Lubbock in his rear view mirror for the grassier confines of Memphis, after which he became persona non grata by the Tech faithful. Oh, wait. No, that didn't really happen.

In 2016 Chris Beard was hired after accepting the the UNLV job. As he explained at the time, he was coming home, based on his 10 years as an assistant under Bob and Pat Knight. Tech went 18-14 and 6-12 in conference. 

In Chris Beard's second season the Red Raiders went to the Elite Eight. Remember, prior to this they had had one tournament appearance in 11 years, and that was a first round loss led by a coach who immediately left for what he perceived to be a better job. It's not just that the team went 27-10, and tied for 2nd in the Big 12 with an 11-7 record. It's that much of what we see here at Texas, Beard did in Lubbock. Only the people of Lubbock are highly insecure, codependent, mental health wrecks of a fan base, so Beard's folksy aspirations, his constant validation of them as people of the earth, and his constant message that they were special, really resonated. It helped build a fantastic, motivated fan base.

The next season - Beard's third - they went 31-7 and 14-4 in conference. They walloped #2 seed Michigan in the Sweet Sixteen, defeated #1 seed Gonzaga, took out #2 seeded Michigan State in the semifinal, then lost to #1 seed Virginia in overtime in the national championship game.

Afterwards, it was true love. Beard had keys to the city, and to the Tech fans' collective hearts. They believed he'd never leave them. 2020 was the Covid year, and then 2021 Tech made it back to the tournament, but lost in the 2nd round. Final records were 18-13, and 18-11 respectively, with a 9-9 and 9-8 finish in conference play, so nothing special. There wasn't any real fear when the Texas job opened up, as Beard was one of them.

When it came out he'd accepted the Texas job, the Tech fans focused on the skullduggery. Him and the Texas AD had met in secret. Beard didn't give Tech an opportunity to respond to UT's offer. Beard brow beat Mark Adams into coming with him, telling Adams he had no chance of getting the head coaching job, and so just give it up already (I have no idea how true this is, but it's gospel from the Tech side of things). All of it showed Beard never meant all those sweet nothings he whispered in the Tech fans' ears. They were all lies. And like any good victim mentality, instead of looking at it rationally and realizing Beard had a job to do and did it to the best of his ability, they were angry. ANGRY!!!

He stole players! It turns out the whole team was going to transfer anyway because they were sick of playing for Beard. He erased all the recruiting info from the Texas Tech hard drives. He treated his long time friend Mark Adams like crap, simply to get him to give up trying to get the head coaching job at Tech to come be his assistant in Austin. He stole the lunch money from elementary kids. He seduced donors' wives. He conducted Satanic ceremonies in the university library. He was just plain evil, but this didn't become apparent until AFTER he'd taken the Texas job. Suddenly, the veil had been lifted from everyone's eyes. They'd been duped! By a master college basketball criminal! A practitioner of the dark arts, who'd used his skills to hoodwink them all!

And sure, they ended up with the architect of Beard's success anyway, after the job had been turned down by a former Tech player in the NBA and they went to Mark Adams as a fallback. Adams was the TRUE head coach responsible for all that success! And, sure enough, Adams has been genuinely impressive, with his evaluations, putting together his roster, convincing players to stick around, and his recruiting has been good so far, too. From the games I've seen, Tech is the better basketball team right now, and Adams deserves the lion's share of credit for that.

That said, this isn't about college basketball any more. This is about good versus evil. Not only is Beard an obvious Nazi sympathizer who eats babies for breakfast, but he went to worst place possible. Their hated rival! Never mind it's a one way rivalry, and Texas is mostly hated for all the things we're always hated for. Or that Beard is a Texas graduate. The Texas Tech sense of justice has been horribly impugned! There must be reparations! They must exact their pound of flesh! Make sure he knows EXACTLY how they feel about his two faced, no good characterless so and so. Fuck Chris Beard! Fuck UT! Let it be our rallying cry!

Whatever.

Man, that’s helluva lot of not caring.

[dcar00 14028]

tortillas after the first basket for sure.

pretty ridiculous they needed a police escort but probably Tech erring on the safe side.  the idiocy quotient seems particularly high.

[dcar00 14028]

21 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

Look you stupid knuckle dragging retard, I'm saying it's probably true he pressured him to come with him (which is perfectly fine and normal) and that some people are blowing that out of proportion to be something it's not. 

God damn please rub your two remaining brain cells together harder so you can build up enough electrical charge to generate a cogent thought of your own.

he never pressured him to come.

[SL Xpress 7504]

1 minute ago, Satchel said:

Man, that’s helluva lot of not caring.

How so? 5 minutes? It was a fun post to write, in all honesty. 

[Brian Fantana 6665]

3 minutes ago, dcar00 said:

he never pressured him to come.

[Revolution512 1480]

I think he would’ve preferred Golding to Tech and Adams with him in Austin. But pretty much everyone got a job

[dcar00 14028]

3 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

you keep on believing your fan fiction.  how aggy of you.

[Satchel 6908]

Fresh from SI: https://www.si.com/college/2022/02/01/mark-adams-texas-tech-chris-beard-successor

In April 2021, the debates ceased. Beard left Lubbock to fill the coaching vacancy in Austin, replacing Shaka Smart after the Longhorns failed to win a tournament game for the seventh straight season. When the head job at Texas Tech opened, Adams was asked by athletic director Kirby Hocutt if he’d like to interview for the gig. Adams’s answer was succinct and sufficient.

“I told Kirby, ’I’ve been interviewing for this job for the last five years.’”

Beard put a full-court press on Adams in an attempt to bring him to the state’s capital, but no salesperson could pull Adams from the job he’d coveted for decades. Adams was named Beard’s replacement five days later, and the program has largely hummed along despite the cloud of uncertainty that loomed in the immediate interim after.

[Brian Fantana 6665]

4 minutes ago, dcar00 said:

you keep on believing your fan fiction.  how aggy of you.

Your line is just as made up as theirs bruh

[markstanco 12501]

A lot of basketball fans across the country will tune in for at least 20 minutes tonight to see what happens. 

A) They will be loud, make it tough, and look like a frenzied fanbase.  Or, (B) they will be true tech fans and throw trash on to the floor and have some arrests.

A would be shocking. 

[dcar00 14028]

1 minute ago, Brian Fantana said:

Your line is just as made up as theirs bruh

actually its not. yes, he wanted him to come to Austin, but he didn't "pressure" him.

[Brian Fantana 6665]

Just now, dcar00 said:

actually its not. yes, he wanted him to come to Austin, but he didn't "pressure" him.

I don't know why you're so defensive about that. He would of course apply some amount of pressure to get him to come. There's nothing wrong with that. Super weird to pick that hill to die on.

[dcar00 14028]

1 minute ago, Brian Fantana said:

I don't know why you're so defensive about that. He would of course apply some amount of pressure to get him to come. There's nothing wrong with that. Super weird to pick that hill to die on.

I'm not dying on any hill I'm just telling you what happened, straight from the horses mouth.

[Brian Fantana 6665]

Riiiiiight

[jwtexan 180]

$500 to get in the building, more expensive than the 2019 national championship game that Tech played in. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HornSports

 

@HornSports

 

Lowest ticket price (with fees) for the game tonight on StubHub right now: $504 Average resale price for a ticket to the 2019 National Championship : $312

 

[JesusSweatDuck 17780]

46 minutes ago, Satchel said:

Fresh from SI: https://www.si.com/college/2022/02/01/mark-adams-texas-tech-chris-beard-successor

In April 2021, the debates ceased. Beard left Lubbock to fill the coaching vacancy in Austin, replacing Shaka Smart after the Longhorns failed to win a tournament game for the seventh straight season. When the head job at Texas Tech opened, Adams was asked by athletic director Kirby Hocutt if he’d like to interview for the gig. Adams’s answer was succinct and sufficient.

“I told Kirby, ’I’ve been interviewing for this job for the last five years.’”

Beard put a full-court press on Adams in an attempt to bring him to the state’s capital, but no salesperson could pull Adams from the job he’d coveted for decades. Adams was named Beard’s replacement five days later, and the program has largely hummed along despite the cloud of uncertainty that loomed in the immediate interim after.

For dark mode 

 

n April 2021, the debates ceased. Beard left Lubbock to fill the coaching vacancy in Austin, replacing Shaka Smart after the Longhorns failed to win a tournament game for the seventh straight season. When the head job at Texas Tech opened, Adams was asked by athletic director Kirby Hocutt if he’d like to interview for the gig. Adams’s answer was succinct and sufficient.

“I told Kirby, ’I’ve been interviewing for this job for the last five years.’”

Beard put a full-court press on Adams in an attempt to bring him to the state’s capital, but no salesperson could pull Adams from the job he’d coveted for decades. Adams was named Beard’s replacement five days later, and the program has largely hummed along despite the cloud of uncertainty that loomed in the immediate interim after.

[closetojumping 62140]

2 hours ago, Satchel said:

Here’s what a Tech fan shared elsewhere. The parting between Beard and Adams was more acrimonious than reported:

“Beard ran everyone off and told recruits not to come to Tech. He left us with like 4 players. Took nearly the entire basketball staff with him saying they wouldn’t have jobs if they didn’t get on the plane to Austin. After Adams refused to get on the plane he ran him down to in order to beat him down to get on the plane. Saying he was too old, Tech would never hire him, and some other things. Adams basically stopped taking his calls so he had his agent and others calling him.

The man even stole our computers and only returned them wiped clean of all basketball related information after we threatened legal action. He deleted our own footage, etc. Pretty sure he took the ice cube trays as well.

But the national media wants us to honor him.”

This reminds me of the write-up shortly after Beard took the job where the Tech fanboy called him a sociopath and told some story about a butter incident at a gala. God, I wish I could remember it, because it is one of the funniest things I have ever read in my life. It reminded me of the review written by the poster "john stamos" of Charlie Sheen's book of poetry on Amazon back in the day, but the Sheen one was actually intentional satire. Thank you for this post, because it made me laugh hard at the memory from last spring.

30 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

I don't know why you're so defensive about that. He would of course apply some amount of pressure to get him to come. There's nothing wrong with that. Super weird to pick that hill to die on.

Have you ever recruited anyone to go from one job to another with you? Did they go?

Some of us have done it, multiple times. You don't do it successfully by pressuring them. You show them what the new opportunity can offer them, your plan for them at the new place, and sell them on why you think it is a better fit than staying, and provide a powerful mental image of what the end game looks like years from now.

The minute you start to pressure the colleague/friend/subordinate, you've lost them to the abyss. You can say it's different in coaching, and I will tell you that you're wrong. The executive roles in the business world are that or more in terms of compensation compared to assistant coaching and the pressures/expectations are also as extreme, if generally not as public.

Your posts, along with a lot of the tech idiocy being posted here from elsewhere regarding Beard's exit and his handling of his relationship with Adams, read like you guys have no fucking clue what you're typing about in terms of how all of this works.

[JesusSweatDuck 17780]

39 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

I don't know why you're so defensive about that. He would of course apply some amount of pressure to get him to come. There's nothing wrong with that. Super weird to pick that hill to die on.

I'm sure the pressure came when Tech was asking him to interview for the job.  I'm sure Beard said something like, "They're looking for a reason to not hire you.  Come to Austin with me, no interview required." 

 

Everything else seems like fan fiction

[torre 1284]

37 minutes ago, markstanco said:

A lot of basketball fans across the country will tune in for at least 20 minutes tonight to see what happens. 

A) They will be loud, make it tough, and look like a frenzied fanbase.  Or, (B) they will be true tech fans and throw trash on to the floor and have some arrests.

A would be shocking. 

A strong conference commissioner would have informed Hocutt and Tech to control the situation.    And failure to do so could result in reprimand, fines, etc.

Has Hocutt made any statement to control the fans ?      And the Bowlsby animosity toward Texas after the SEC departure likely means he will covertly enjoy the possible havoc.    Very sad for the B12 and college athletics if there are serious issues.

 

[Wally Pryor 5243]

30 cops tonight?  Per section? 

[Satchel 6908]

3 minutes ago, JesusSweatDuck said:

I'm sure the pressure came when Tech was asking him to interview for the job.  I'm sure Beard said something like, "They're looking for a reason to not hire you.  Come to Austin with me, no interview required." 

 

Everything else seems like fan fiction

I read somewhere that Adams was pursued by several NBA teams to be their defensive specialist? Makes sense that Beard would have put the full court press on him.

[Brian Fantana 6665]

3 minutes ago, Wally Pryor said:

30 cops tonight?  Per section? 

Hopefully in full riot gear and maybe they'll put up a hockey shield around the court. With razor wire on top.

Turn the heat up to 90 in the building, too. No one gets out alive.

[ztejas 43260]

3 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

Turn the heat up to 90 in the building, too.

Spurs won a championship doing that. 

[TrashMaster G 17385]

5 hours ago, Uncle Nate said:

Now, with all that said, I don't hate CB and I wish our fans would be rowdy and loud tonight but also respectful and clean about it as well.  

Based on everything that has happened so far, you know damn well that ain't happening.

 

5 hours ago, Uncle Nate said:

If you were being completely honest with yourselves, deep down you wish your student fanbase had even a tenth of the passion that the Tech students are displaying now.

Only if it comes with also staying pretty classy, so about the polar opposite of what we are seeing from the Tech fans.

 

And I am really enjoying the oft-repeated line from Tech fans about how they ended up with the better coach.  If they really believed this, why would they be so upset about Beard leaving?  There wasn't anything un-classy about they way he did it.  And he left for his alma mater - any college person should understand the appeal of that.

All that tells me is that they are full of shit.

[Blotto 23424]

4 minutes ago, Satchel said:

I read somewhere that Adams was pursued by several NBA teams to be their defensive specialist? Makes sense that Beard would have put the full court press on him.

I have no doubt that Beard would have liked to bring Adams along. That being said looking at the adjusted defensive efficiency, there's not a lot of difference between the teams. (same hold true for offensive efficiency, record conference record, etc...) two pretty evenly matched teams on paper on a neutral court. Obviously tonight's game is the furthest thing to a neutral court possible. Intrigued to see how  Beard gets our team ready for this game, how hard they play in this one. 

My guess is a few drunken fans will get a little too hyped for this one, hopefully nobody throws shit and we get a clean game. A win here (not expecting) should do fucking wonders for team confidence. A curb stomping loss would be less than ideal. Interestingly, the line opened at Tech favored by 6 and has moved down to 4. I would have guessed it would drift the opposite direction as we havent exactly dazzled on the road so far this year. 

[OU Sucks 8745]

21 hours ago, Samson's Wig said:

Beard burned bridges with napalm in West Texas on his way out the door, including with big donors, and actively worked to undermine Tech's program after he left.

Too bad he didn't burn everything.

[Js1 85085]

41 minutes ago, closetojumping said:

This reminds me of the write-up shortly after Beard took the job where the Tech fanboy called him a sociopath and told some story about a butter incident at a gala. God, I wish I could remember it, because it is one of the funniest things I have ever read in my life. It reminded me of the review written by the poster "john stamos" of Charlie Sheen's book of poetry on Amazon back in the day, but the Sheen one was actually intentional satire. Thank you for this post, because it made me laugh hard at the memory from last spring.

Have you ever recruited anyone to go from one job to another with you? Did they go?

Some of us have done it, multiple times. You don't do it successfully by pressuring them. You show them what the new opportunity can offer them, your plan for them at the new place, and sell them on why you think it is a better fit than staying, and provide a powerful mental image of what the end game looks like years from now.

The minute you start to pressure the colleague/friend/subordinate, you've lost them to the abyss. You can say it's different in coaching, and I will tell you that you're wrong. The executive roles in the business world are that or more in terms of compensation compared to assistant coaching and the pressures/expectations are also as extreme, if generally not as public.

Your posts, along with a lot of the tech idiocy being posted here from elsewhere regarding Beard's exit and his handling of his relationship with Adams, read like you guys have no fucking clue what you're typing about in terms of how all of this works.

Omg I forgot about the butter story 😂

[UTEE97 3429]

35 minutes ago, Satchel said:

I read somewhere that Adams was pursued by several NBA teams to be their defensive specialist? Makes sense that Beard would have put the full court press on him.

Asking Adams to join him was the right thing to do. There was no guarantee that Tech would have retained him. Every coach in the country tries to recruit their best assistants to the new gig.

[Brian Fantana 6665]

8 minutes ago, longhornmatt said:

Wait, so Chris Beard was a bad boss and a bad friend for offering Mark Adams a job instead of saying, “Don’t come calling here if Tech doesn’t keep you.  I will have nothing to do with you from now on since I’ve got my new gig and don’t want you.”

That is an interesting take.   In the M&A world, I certainly know which scenario would be looked at as more of a betrayal.

Wait he did or he didn't want him? Your version of events is confusing.

[Satchel 6908]

Just now, UTEE97 said:

Asking Adams to join him was the right thing to do. There was no guarantee that Tech would have retained him. Every coach in the country tries to recruit their best assistants to the new gig.

Precisely. The question seems to be about how Beard went about it.

[Samson's Wig 3174]

The butter story came from Fran Fraschilla.  Beard has an ego.  Big deal.  Most coaches do.

[Steamboat1874 4032]

7 minutes ago, UTEE97 said:

Asking Adams to join him was the right thing to do. There was no guarantee that Tech would have retained him. Every coach in the country tries to recruit their best assistants to the new gig.

So what will Tech fans think when Adams leaves in a few years when he is offered a big time job at a real basketball school.

[Satchel 6908]

1 minute ago, Steamboat1874 said:

So what will Tech fans think when Adams leaves in a few years when he is offered a big time job at a real basketball school.

The only place Adams will leave Tech for is the farm.

[4th&Five 41457]

 

[Underdog 28442]

5 hours ago, BigOrange1 said:

that's too bad, it's a pretty solid post.

I’ll wait for the movie, thank you. 

[Gut Wagon 8052]

The jilted always want revenge. Just not often badly enough to camp out on a Lubbock sidewalk in January. Then again, these are people who chose to be in Lubbock to start with. 

[Samson's Wig 3174]

4 minutes ago, Steamboat1874 said:

So what will Tech fans think when Adams leaves in a few years when he is offered a big time job at a real basketball school.

If he leaves with class, the way a coach, or any other employee, should do -  they'll probably be fine.  Those who ignore the way Beard left Tech without a word, lying his butt off to those on the inside, never addressing the fan base or students before he skulked away in the night, have their head in the sand.  Beard is a snake.  Fortunately, he can coach basketball.  Those who think he wouldn't do the same thing to Texas if a true basketball blue blood comes calling are delusional.  Longhorn basketball fans will handle it better than Tech fans in large part because there just aren't very many longhorn basketball fans.  There's a right way and a wrong way to move on to a new job, and his track record with UNLV and Tech proves he doesn't have the EQ or whatever it takes to do it right.  Here's hoping he has success before he ducks out or he is run off.

[Texas73 420]

9 minutes ago, 4th&Five said:

 

Will this turn out to be like Abe Lemons vs Eddie Sutton? Those were some great times.

[hobbes2702 12783]

14 minutes ago, Samson's Wig said:

If he leaves with class, the way a coach, or any other employee, should do -  they'll probably be fine.  Those who ignore the way Beard left Tech without a word, lying his butt off to those on the inside, never addressing the fan base or students before he skulked away in the night, have their head in the sand.  Beard is a snake.  Fortunately, he can coach basketball.  Those who think he wouldn't do the same thing to Texas if a true basketball blue blood comes calling are delusional.  Longhorn basketball fans will handle it better than Tech fans in large part because there just aren't very many longhorn basketball fans.  There's a right way and a wrong way to move on to a new job, and his track record with UNLV and Tech proves he doesn't have the EQ or whatever it takes to do it right.  Here's hoping he has success before he ducks out or he is run off.

Couple things here…

1) do you have any evidence for your claims about “leaving without a word”, “lying hit butt off” or “sulked away in the night”? What evidence is there if him being “a snake”?

2) are you implying that there are more tech basketball fans than longhorn basketball fans? The Texas fanbase isn’t much for basketball but neither is tech. What the hell are you even talking about 

[TommysTinyTowels 785]

Gonna be a free throw shooting contest.

No way the refs don’t call this game as tight as possible trying to keep it all under control.

[Brian Fantana 6665]

That's pretty funny not gonna lie

[Js1 85085]

33 minutes ago, 4th&Five said:

 

 

[sunset87 240]

Tech fans are outraged at Beard for they way he left. Ok fine.  I also know there's always two sides to every story and we are only hearing one side being screamed in our ear. The entire fan base seems to have intimate knowledge of every detail of how things went down.  Maybe, maybe not. Color me skeptical.  I do know the Tech fan base has the biggest chip on their shoulder of any group I've ever encountered (trust me on this I live in West Texas). They are the stalker ex.

Also, Beard took the Tech job after already accepting the UNLV job. But hey, fuck UNLV, right Tech.  I mean Beard was assistant at Tech prior to that so that's perfectly fine I guess.  And spare me with the, it's not remotely the same situation. I know that, but I think it's funny that bit history is conveniently swept into the corner.  Wonder how UNLV felt.

He might do the same to UT at some point. He does have a history of trying to climb the ladder and he has apparently stepped on a few people along the way.  Gee, that never happens.  Somehow we'll have to put on our big boy pants and deal with it if it does.

[Uncle Nate 2097]

5 minutes ago, Js1 said:

 

Now THAT is funny. 

[JesusSweatDuck 17780]

52 minutes ago, 4th&Five said:

 

Good.  I hope Beard walks out and takes a giant shit at mid-court.

[UTEX_ME 4754]

No way Texas wins tonight. I hope they let Beard leave the court before the final horn. Court will be rushed and I’d bet good money he will be harassed or injured 

[JesusSweatDuck 17780]

1 minute ago, UTEX_ME said:

No way Texas wins tonight. I hope they let Beard leave the court before the final horn. Court will be rushed and I’d bet good money he will be harassed or injured 

I hope Beard beats the shit out of a Tech fan.  Fuck Texas Tech and their white trash shitty ass fans.

[Uncle Nate 2097]

1 minute ago, UTEX_ME said:

No way Texas wins tonight. I hope they let Beard leave the court before the final horn. Court will be rushed and I’d bet good money he will be harassed or injured 

 No way. Guaranteed they’ve got enough security to keep that from happening. But I have a bad feeling about tonight’s game. Students won’t rush the court if their team loses.

[Samson's Wig 3174]

2 minutes ago, hobbes2702 said:

Couple things here…

1) do you have any evidence for your claims about “leaving without a word”, “lying hit butt off” or “sulked away in the night”? What evidence is there if him being “a snake”?

2) are you implying that there are more tech basketball fans than longhorn basketball fans? The Texas fanbase isn’t much for basketball but neither is tech. What the hell are you even talking about 

If you don't see these things you either don't pay attention to basketball or are willfully blind. And I think that is the case for many Longhorns where basketball is concerned, unfortunately. He never addressed the tech fanbase when he left.  A simple "thanks for the memories" speech would have prevented most of the vitriol.  He bailed on UNLV without every really showing up at all.  It's a pattern.  As for lying, he misled both the administration and the donors right up till he called them from Austin.  All of this is public information.  Dude is not a decent guy.  That's okay.  He wasn't hired to be a decent guy.  But I understand why tech fans hate him.  He's also been masterful at working the media.  One of the most image driven coaches I've ever seen.  This can be a great thing when it's in your favor.  But look at that tweet posted above of the life-size bobble head doll of himself Beard ordered with athletic department money before he skipped town for Austin.  That's the ego we're working with here.  When things are going well, awesome, but he can turn into a nightmare when things aren't going his way. One minor example: 

As for Tech having more invested basketball fans than Texas?  Yes, very much so, and it's been that way for a long time going back way before Beard was head coach there.  They hit a slump under Pat Knight, but all in all they've been much more invested in basketball as a community than Texas going back well into the SWC days (when Texas had better fan support than it does now).  Texas will continue to get one-and-done big name recruits and have the occasional success in the tourney, because Texas, but that's not an indication of fan support.  Just reading this forum, and how few post here that know anything about college basketball, especially anything that happened before five to ten years ago, is a solid indicator.  Part of tech's basketball fanbase is probably due to so many miserable years of football, whereas Texas has had a couple of places to hang their hat on that front over the decades at least.  Tech fans can enjoy even a mediocre basketball team.  Then factor in what has happened to Austin in terms of growth. Austin isn't a college town anymore (and hasn't been for a while), which is generally required to fill up basketball games and build energy. Student bodies?  Well, let's just say those kids hurling vulgar epithets at the bus in Lubbock are more likely to produce a rowdy basketball crowd than our collection of engineering and Plan II kids.