Great hire by Del Conte. Chris Beard can flat out coach, and he’ll have much better athletes to run his system with at Texas. It’s nice to get a proven power-5 coach this time.
Just to add to how ridiculous his career was: 15 national titles, 12 runners-up national title in 5 different decades, under 6 US Presidents top 3 finish in 34 of his 43 years 42 straight conference titles 3 time US Olympic coach 29 Longhorn Olympians won 63 medals and 39 golds
Was not the same said when the last coach was hired? Be careful what you wish for because its harder to coach "better" athletes with their own agendas. I do think it's a good hire but I thought Herriman was as well.
Beard seems like a good hire and hopefully the resources available in Austin allow him to coach at a level he couldn't in Lubbock. Like the beginning of Shaka's tenure, I am bracing for a rocky first few years while he builds up a recruiting class. The cupboard is bare at the moment.
Yes, everyone thought UT hit a home run with Shaka Smart, and many were surprised he picked us over other big-time programs that wanted him. However, Shaka Smart nor Tom Herman (nor Charlie Strong, too) had even been a head coach in an elite conference, much less had proven success in an elite conference like Chris Beard has had. Chris Beard took Tech to the National Championship game two years ago and has consistently won games in the Big 12 and the NCAA Tournament. This hire is more similar to when Texas hired Rick Barnes from Clemson except Beard has a much deeper NCAA Tournament run on his resume. Also, Smart and Herman were their own worst enemies at Texas. Smart was successful at VCU by running an aggressive, pressing defense called Havoc, and he completely abandoned it at Texas. All that did was expose his deficiencies in creating good offensive sets for his team. Herman was arrogant and thought he was the smartest guy in the room. He also pissed a lot of donors and boosters off with the way he handled “The Eyes of Texas” controversy. If he coached every regular season game like he did bowl games, he never gets fired.
Good catch. It was NC State that tried courting Barnes during his tenure at UT because he’s from the state. He coached at Clemson and Providence before coming to Texas.
I think the biggest thing for the team is if the garage doors over the upper bowl of the new arena work as intended and we have a loud, intimate environment for games.
Apparently Beard was of mind that Tech's contract with Under Armour hindered recruiting quite a bit. IT is reporting that there will be a few players that will follow Beard here.
Him coaching at a Power 5 school has little to do with anything IMO, he has to able to coach guys that are used to being catered to and have been ranked since Jr High and are looking at 1 and done. At Tech he had guys who he could actually mold and would be around a couple of years, now he will have guys who are using UT as a stepping stone. So unless he continues to go after 2 and 3 star guys it's gonna be very different.
Will there be an adjustment for Beard in terms of the caliber of talent he will be expected to recruit and coach at Texas? Of course. However, there is a big difference between coaching basketball in the Big 12 and coaching in the Colonial Athletic Association, where Smart was before he came to Texas. Beard’s learning curve is much smaller than Smart’s was because has already proven he can be successful in the basketball conference Texas plays in, and that makes him a much likelier bet to succeed at Texas. Also, like I said, Smart abandoned his coaching philosophy the moment he arrived in Austin. He made his transition to the Big 12 much harder on himself.
Beard will need to make adjustments for sure, something Shaka failed to do accordingly and Herman seemingly refused to do. We will see how things go but Beard is as good of a hire as you can get at this juncture IMO.
He's had a top 40ish type recruit in each of his last 3 classes at Tech, and was basically recruiting at a top 20 level at Tech. They were ranked lower this year because they only had 1 commit -- who is a high 4 star (35th ranked overall).
I don't really think so I think it mostly depends on the guys being recruited and them taking to that type of coaching. Smart was successful at VCU when coaching against power 5 teams outside of the tournament as well,I just don't think it's that simple. Now I will say maybe it was to big of a jump because of age and overall experience but that is my opinion. I just don't think its about the size of the conference.
Top 40 ish is much different from top 10 how many 1 and done guys did he have? Once you get a group of guys looking only to the NBA things change. Not trying to knock Beards ability just saying things don't automatically translate because its in the same conference we are talking about going from Iowa to NYC.
conference absolutely matters. Shaka's praise has always rested mostly on his cinderalla run in 2011. After that he didn't do much at all. In fact he has a losing record vs power 5 teams when he was at vcu so he actually wasn't successful
