Wrapping up our look at the four greatest eras of Texas Tech basketball by putting together the all-time Chris Beard era team.
One year ago at this time, Texas Tech basketball fans were swept up in Final Four fever as Chris Beard and his Red Raiders were in the sport’s premier event for the first time. Just 12 months later, it feels like we are living in a completely different world where we have nothing to do but spend time looking back on those memories from Minneapolis.
During this period of social isolation, it’s also as good of a time as any to reflect on what Beard has managed to accomplish in just four years as head coach in Lubbock. Though we’ve all lived through the program’s rise to prominence, the Beard era still feels like a dream.
With an overall record of 94-44, his 0.681 winning percentage is the best in Red Raider history. And in just seven seasons, he already climbed to No. 7 in program history in terms of total victories. Every man ahead of him on that list was head coach for at least seven seasons and if Beard can win 22 games next season, he will climb into 5th place to sit right behind Bob Knight, whom Beard coached under at Tech for a decade.
What’s more amazing about what Beard has achieved thus far at Tech is that he’s taken his team to the Elite Eight and National Championship Game in back-to-back years with talent that most people would consider far from elite. It’s not that the players Beard has had to work with have been scrubs but for the most part, they have been far from the type of blue-blood prospects that other elite programs have been relying on.
Beard managed to get to the brink of a National Title in just his third year despite having only two players to come through his program (Davide Moretti and Brandone Francis) that were rated as four-star prospects by 247Sports when coming out of high school. (Technically, a third, Khavon Moore did play for the Red Raiders but his two career minutes played as a Red Raider don’t really qualify as enough for us to consider him part of this program’s success.)
Of course, the 2019-20 season saw the influx of blue-chip talent start to arrive as the program’s success is now yielding greater treasures on the recruiting trail as Jahmi’us Ramsey (the No. 32 overall player in his class) and Terrance Shannon (No. 90 overall) began their careers while a trio of top 150 players, Nimari Burnett, Micah Peavy, and Chibuzo Agbo are set to arrive next season.
That’s why it’s so exciting to think about where Beard could possibly take this program in the upcoming years. But it’s going to be a least seven months before we have the opportunity to see the continued evolution of the Texas Tech basketball program so while we wait, let’s look back on what an all-time Chris Beard era team would look like.