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Chris Beard to Texas


Machinator

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18 minutes ago, Machinator said:

From Gerry Hamilton:

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Ogden is a terrific evaluator.

Zhaire Smith and Davide Moretti were his evals early. Ogden was the Tech coach that flew to Italy to see Moretti in person.

He was key in that 2017 class that led to getting to the E8 and NC game.

 

Thank you 

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Beard's better teams at Tech didn't have superstars on them.  He has struggled with higher quality recruits the last couple of seasons, including losing two star players entirely (quit the team) this season - one being a McDonald's All American.  Whether or not his culture will work with the recruits he will be expected to bring in here is going to be interesting.  Maybe he'll be able to change his stripes, but the underdog mentality will be a bit harder to nurture with a bunch of star talent.

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1 hour ago, texifornia said:

Between BitterWhiteGuy from Barking Carnival and Will Curry from BON, the SBN guys are faaaar from thrilled with this hire. Not that I agree, but just putting it out there.

 

I stopped listening to Pretend We are Football after about the third year of Texas sucking in basketball with Bitter White Guy and crew just talking about how he may not succeed at Texas but he was a good coach.

So I don't really care what he thinks. 

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8 minutes ago, Ricky Butler said:

I'm not referring to offense. He's down on the Beard hire. While it might not be one's first choice, he has been very successful.

https://bitterwhiteguy.substack.com/p/coaching-replacement-szn

Quote

The Downside
His offense is…not great. Conceptually it’s not terrible, but his roster decisions (more on this below) make it difficult for him to ever really optimize that end of the floor. He is as reliant on a superlative offensive talent as Shaka or Rick Barnes ever were to cover for the shortcomings on that end. To that point, I’m going to post a handful of stats below:

a4012935-d339-4c6f-9e79-a9ae9d67b44a_677

One of those teams is this year’s Tech squad, one is last year’s Texas squad, and one is Rick Barnes’ last season in Austin. You can figure out which is which if you’re so inclined to look it up, but the fact you’re probably going to need to look it up is kinda the point. Chris Beard teams have the same scoring droughts that Texas teams have had that made you gnash your teeth, they have the same issues filling up the basket that a lot of Texas teams have. Chris Beard does not win games pretty, and he does not win with beautiful offense. His teams play slow, they grind, and they rely on defense to win games. You are signing up for a lot of first-team-to-60 rock fights if you bring him in. You may not care if it results in wins, and that’s fair. But, you know, you’ve been warned.

Chris Beard has a lot of roster churn, and I do mean a lot of roster churn. He’s averaging 3 players leaving via the transfer portal the last three years in addition to the guys who go pro early, which is happening more frequently now that he’s bringing in more top-50 players. He also seems to lose those top-50 recruits nearly as fast as he signs them. Jahmi’us Ramsey left after a season when he was only getting drafted in the 2nd round, Nimari Burnett made it half a season before transferring, Khavon Moore played so few minutes for Tech before transferring I had to actively dig to find his KenPom stats. There’s an argument to be made that Beard’s preferred style and preferred type of player is just as incongruous with what Texas tends to land as Shaka Smart when he first got here, and he will have to either scale down the type of player he wants to the 3-star types who will happily grind 60-56 wins with defense and taking charges, or he’ll have to change his offensive philosophy to suit the higher-level players. The thing is, he’s been in this same situation at Tech, and he hasn’t changed much at all. He’s as guilty of going after high-level recruits as Shaka was - and it makes sense, you want talent! - but where Shaka went away from HAVOC/SHART to a more NBA-style of offense, Beard keeps running his motion principles. That style of offense works best with an experienced roster who has been running it forever, and constantly bringing in 6-8 new faces every year means the execution is going to be highly variable. I have concerns that he’s going to continue to churn rosters wherever he is next year, and if that’s at Texas it will be a headwind on the program’s potential. Beard can recruit, but his ability/desire to retain talent is an open question.

Money is a primary concern as he’s already making $5m/year and would probably need a substantial raise to come to Texas. I know there’s a portion of the Texas crowd who thinks CDC will money-whip him because something something we’re the Joneses, despite the fact that this is no longer 1985 and TV revenue deals mean more schools can pay their coaches like Texas can. Hell, Tech could still go higher on his pay if they really want to keep him around. It’s not like Texas can offer $5.5m and Tech won’t at least consider matching. I don’t know what CDC’s salary cap is on the job, but if he’s talking to Beard then he’s at least willing to consider breaching $5m/year for the right person. This might be the only person he’s willing to do it for, we’ll see.

I don’t know if there is a way to put this politely: Beard can get away with some things at Tech that might not happen at Texas. I don’t pretend that Texas is clean and pure as the driven snow, but Tech’s compliance staff is not putting up as big a fight as Texas’ compliance staff will. How do I know this? Because Shaka was interested in one of Beard’s assistants before said assistant joined Tech, and Texas compliance came back with something akin to ‘lolnowtf’. I’m not going to name the assistant, but I know that story is true. There are other stories similar to this that I can’t divulge, but suffice it to say it’s a thing. And look, I’m not saying he’s a bad person - by all accounts he’s a decent guy - but if we’re talking about downsides his potential exposure to a Will Wade/Bill Self situation is not zero.

I think the way I would put it for Beard is that his ceiling is Peak Barnes and his average is more like Late Barnes. There’s just a lot of him that screams Barnes 2.0 to me; while Texas could definitely do a lot worse than that and Beard is probably the safest bet on this list, it’s a lot of money to pay for a product that isn’t particularly fun to watch and may not be a ton better than what got the last two coaches let go. Paying $6m/year for Final Four runs is justifiable, but paying $6m/year for 2nd-round exits will get old really fast.

 

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8 minutes ago, Samson's Wig said:

Beard's better teams at Tech didn't have superstars on them.  He has struggled with higher quality recruits the last couple of seasons, including losing two star players entirely (quit the team) this season - one being a McDonald's All American.  Whether or not his culture will work with the recruits he will be expected to bring in here is going to be interesting.  Maybe he'll be able to change his stripes, but the underdog mentality will be a bit harder to nurture with a bunch of star talent.

Don’t feed the trolls

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14 minutes ago, Machinator said:

You're reading it wrong, @Bitterwhiteguy think's Beard's offense is milquetoast at best.

I don’t know what it is about our own media guys but I feel the opposite of that other poster- I think they’re all too quick to shit all over our teams/coaches. Nobody loves bagging on Texas more than the people that cover our teams. 

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2 minutes ago, longhornmatt said:

This reads like someone trying to make an argument against Beard rather than good faith analysis.  First, I’m pretty sure this year’s Tech team is the one with the highest adjusted offensive efficiency rating of the three (I’ll leave it you to figure which one is which - thanks, guy), and the difference between 104 and 112 is actually material.

It also ignores all kinds of other factors when you just list shooting percentages and pace.  What were their turnovers and offensive rebound numbers?  What volumes did they produce (did they get to the FT line a lot or not - just saying they shot 70% is meaningless)?  For example, Tech was 31st in made FTs this year, and Texas was 353rd last year (as an aside, holy fuck at that stat with our roster of athletic slasher types).

Tech also played fewer non-conference patsies this year to pad their shooting percentages because of Covid.  

And, of course, we aren’t taking into account the rosters each coach had to work with.  I don’t think he is making the point he thinks he’s making by highlighting that Chris Beard produces as good or better offense relying on Mac McClung to do everything as Rick Barnes did with Myles fucking Turner, Isaiah Taylor, Ridley, Holmes, etc.  

Finally, it also doesn’t take into account that Tech’s defense with Beard was elite and way fucking better than Texas under Shaka or late Barnes.  

Everything that guy just said is bullshit.

Also, Tech beat Texas 2 out of 3 and won a game in the tourney. Something we haven't seen in awhile. The whole thing is bullshit. 

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Tech and Lubbock should cheer Beard every time he coaches there. He lifted their program and stature to levels they had not ever sniffed. He made it a basketball town with sell out crowds and gave them something to believe in while their football team sucked sucks.  He left the place, way, way better than he found it.

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2 minutes ago, MonkeyDoughnut said:

Tech and Lubbock should cheer Beard every time he coaches there. He lifted their program and stature to levels they had not ever sniffed. He made it a basketball town with sell out crowds and gave them something to believe in while their football team sucked sucks.  He left the place, way, way better than he found it.

Your analysis seems to be ignoring the fact that most tech grads are morons.

 

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3 minutes ago, Machinator said:

 

Is their arena even open?  

I thought their arena was named for United Airlines because Lubbock was trying to be a focus city or some shit.  I didn't know they were named after the two-bit grocer.

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