[ad_1]
Kirby Hocutt tried to put a brave face on it. He tried to spin it.
Call the Texas Tech Red Raiders 0 for 2 athletics director on this account. And that doesn’t even include the real reason for Hocutt’s sad press conference on Thursday – discussing the massive loss of head coach Chris Beard, who is now the new coach of the Texas Longhorns.
Hocutt began by trying to describe the loss of the most successful basketball coach in program history to a rival in the state as a change of leadership instead of a setback. The number of people buying this is close to zero and almost certainly doesn’t include Hocutt in anything other than his press conference on Thursday.
From a Texas perspective, the schadenfreude is not reason enough to write about a sad press conference about Hocutt’s terrible, horrible, not good, very bad day – the Texas Tech sports director actually provided relevant information about how Beard’s departure went.
The story really begins last fall as the Red Raiders remained proactive in trying to keep Beard in Lubbock by offering him a lifetime contract or a lifetime contract in addition to the lucrative extension Beard signed in 2019, making him one of the highest paid coaches of all. college basketball.
The beard refused.
“It became evident in the months to come that there was no interest in this type of lifetime agreement or continuing contract,” Hocutt said.
The Texas Tech administration remained persistent, continuing discussions about the NCAA tournament, in which Hocutt and Tony Hernandez, Hocutt’s chief operating officer, sat down with Beard’s agent “to continue talk about future opportunities ”.
Those conversations have continued in a different vein in recent days after Texas athletics director Chris Del Conte called Hocutt to seek permission to interview Beard out of professional courtesy. During a conversation in Beard’s office on Wednesday afternoon, Hocutt and Beard discussed the future of Texas Tech basketball. Late in the evening, Beard called Hocutt.
“I could tell he had a decision to make and I could tell it was really weighing him down, and he wanted to take a night to sleep on it and make his final decision at some point today,” Hocutt said.
About twelve hours later, Beard had made up his mind – he called Hocutt to tell him he was returning to Austin. And Beard was genuinely determined, as the now-former Texas Tech coach refused to allow the Red Raiders to provide a counter-offer, leaving Hocutt somewhere between anger and discouragement.
“Frustration? Absolutely. Disappointment? Absolutely.”
After unexpectedly leaving Beard, Hocutt found himself echoing Beard’s words to sum up the day.
“To use a term Coach Beard uses every day, you engage in combat,” Hocutt said. “We’ve been fighting for five years and the fight is not over, and you have somebody who then leaves to go to a conference school, a public school, absolutely it frustrates you, hell yes, if we are honest, loyal, and sincere about the possibility of fighting, and you fight every day. Yeah, frustration, would be a nice word to sum up.
Hocutt wasn’t immediately sure this frustration would continue with more departures to Austin – Beard offered his staff the option of joining him on the Forty Acres, but at least one assistant coach isn’t coming to Texas in the same role with the addition of UT-Arlington head coach Chris Ogden before Beard’s hiring became official.
The most important assistant for Beard at Texas Tech is Mark Adams, the one-off defense architect who made him one of the highest paid assistant coaches in college basketball. Hocutt said Adams was still at Lubbock on Thursday and it was possible that after being head coach for 23 seasons at lower levels Adams could succeed Beard at Lubbock.
Having to consider Adams for this role is something Hocutt still struggled with as he was holding what was possibly the saddest press conference of his career.
“He shared with me today that he was ready for another challenge so I don’t fully understand him,” Hocutt said. “It was obviously not for better fan support or better facilities. He told me it wasn’t for financial reasons.
Beard just wanted to come home to the Forty Acres.
[ad_2]
Source link