Texas Tech basketball: Why Chris Beard was no-brainer Coach of the Year

Beard’s team has improved tremendously over the course of the season

Another factor making Chris Beard’s performance so impressive this year has been his team’s improvement down the stretch.  While Tech has been one of the most consistent teams in the nation this year, there is no doubt that Beard and his staff have taken the Red Raiders to a new level since the start of February.

For the sake of this point, we will look only at Tech’s games against major conference opponents because the prevalence of teams that could hardly spell basketball , much less play it, on the non-conference slate tends to skew the stats disproportionately.

While the Red Raiders have been fantastic defensively from the jump, their offense has taken huge strides since the mid-way point of Big 12 play. In Tech’s first 13 games vs. major conference teams, the Red Raiders averaged 67.3 points per game and shot just  44.3% from the field and just over 33% from 3-point range as a team.  In those games, they went a respectable 9-4.

But in the 15 games since, the Red Raiders have been averaging 76.1 p.p.g. and have been shooting 48.7% from the floor and 39.1% from 3-point range as the offense has been one of the most efficient in the nation.  And in that span, Tech has gone 13-2 including a 9-game win-streak to end the regular season and clinch a share of the Big 12 title.

Good teams get better as the season progresses and that is the case for this year’s Texas Tech basketball team.  And much of that credit goes to Chris Beard and his coaching staff.