Comfort Suites, McDonald’s and Monday nights: Chris Beard’s ready to bring titles to Texas after unorthodox - The Dallas Morning News

Texas athletics director Chris Del Conte boarded a plane to the small town of Plainview, Texas, 47 miles north of Lubbock, at 5 a.m. Thursday morning with one goal in mind: Bringing Texas Tech head basketball coach Chris Beard to UT.

Beard rolled into Del Conte’s hotel room at the Comfort Suites hours later, just before the group snagged a few Egg McMuffin’s and McDonald’s coffees. The two spent three-and-a-half hours talking about UT, Beard’s alma mater, and laying out Beard’s vision for winning national championships at the University, something the Longhorns haven’t done.

Beard agreed to be Texas’ next head coach before lunch.

He wasted no time calling his fiancé, his three daughters and his parents to let them know he was going back to Austin, where he began his coaching career in the mid-90s under former head coach Tom Penders. Beard had waited his entire life to get to this stage and had no regrets about his decision to leave the Red Raiders, although he admitted in a Friday press conference that leaving Texas Tech was one of the hardest decisions of his life.

Del Conte, UT president Jay Hartzell and UT System board of regents chairman Kevin Eltife officially introduced Beard just after 10 a.m. Friday morning in a much more comfortable setting, filled with esteemed Texas basketball alums ripe with belief that the Longhorns had finally hired “the guy” to bring the hungry fanbase the success it’s craved over the last decade.

Beard believes he’s “the guy” too.

“The pride and winning tradition of The University of Texas will not be entrusted to the weak or the timid,” Beard said, recalling the UT battle cry. “I’m not timid, I’m not weak. I understand exactly what we’re getting into here. I’m proud. I’m excited. I’m happy. I couldn’t sleep last night just because I can’t wait to get started.”

Now that Beard has gotten started, he’s building up a program that has desperately lacked the NCAA Tournament success it was spoiled by in the early Rick Barnes days. The Longhorns didn’t win a March Madness game in six years under former head coach Shaka Smart, who left UT for the same position at Marquette last week.

But that’s something Beard can fix.

Beard took Texas Tech to unprecedented heights in his five seasons with the Red Raiders, winning nine tournament games and appearing in the school’s only national championship game in 2019. Texas Tech had previously won three combined Tournament games in the last 20 years and promptly offered him a rolling lifetime contract after the 2019 national championship game. The agreement would have added one year to the existing contract after every season for the remainder of Beard’s career, but he declined.

Beard said money wasn’t the deciding factor. Texas Tech had already made him the fourth-highest paid coach in college basketball, according to the USA Today NCAA coaches salaries database, and he received over $1.6 million more in 2021 than Smart.

So, if money isn’t a factor, why Texas?

“I don’t coach for money, I coach to win. I want to win championships... I’m all about one thing: winning,” Beard said. “And to have a chance to coach at the University of Texas, [with] this challenge and opportunity and the power of this institution and fan base and history and tradition, when these things combine with the hunger that I have and our staff will have and the players that we have [will] exhibit, when these things combine, ‘special’ can happen.

“To me, ‘special’ is [the national championship game] Monday night.”

Texas has never made it to Monday night and has only appeared in one Final Four in the last 70 years, although that doesn’t change Beard’s expectation to win immediately. He plans on winning sooner rather than later and won’t ask for a rebuild or patience during the coaching change. He even said that his first year won’t be a ‘first-year doesn’t matter, put an asterisk on it’ season.

But he will be dealing with significant roster turnover. Former Texas forward Royce Hamm and guard Donovan Williams have both entered the transfer portal, forward Gerald Liddell has transferred to Alabama State and forward Kai Jones has declared for the NBA draft. Freshman forward Greg Brown is also expected to declare for the draft in the coming days. Senior guard Matt Coleman and senior forward Jericho Sims have yet to announce if they will return for a fifth season.

That won’t matter to Beard.

Roster turnover has always been in Beard’s comfort zone, going back to his days as the head coach at Fort Scott Community College and Seminole State Junior College. He said it prepared him for the unpredictable modern landscape of Division I basketball filled with transfer players and one-and-dones and won’t waver his championship expectations.

Or his excitement about returning to Texas.

“I’m a proud graduate [of UT]. Everything just kind of clicked and I knew this was going to be the right decision, a difficult decision to tell people that I respect and love at Texas Tech, but this is life. And to me, life’s about opportunities.

“And I intend to make the most out of this one.”

Find more Texas coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.

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Comfort Suites, McDonald’s and Monday nights: Chris Beard’s ready to bring titles to Texas after unorthodox - The Dallas Morning News
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