Keenan Evans = Enchiladas
Two days later, after Tech beat S.F.A. to move to the second round of the tournament, Beard worked more food into his postgame press conference. But it wasn’t Whataburger that he invoked this time, rather he compared coaching senior point guard Keenan Evans to eating enchiladas.
"“I just love coaching him,” he said. “I just don’t want it to end. I just want to coach that guy another day. It’s like when you go to a good movie and it’s getting toward the end and you’re loving the movie so much that you want it to go a little bit farther. “Or you know, you got a good plate of enchiladas and you’re looking at it and you only got two bites left but it’s so good that you turn it into three bites. I want it to keep lasting.”"
One has to wonder what Evans thought when he heard his head coach compare him to a plate of Mexican food. But given the way the point guard played that year, it’s easy to see why Beard wanted to keep coaching him for as long as possible.
Averaging 17.6 points and 3.2 assists per game as a senior, Evans garnered consensus second-team All-American honors. Against SFA, he put up 23 points, six rebounds, five assists, a steal, and a block carrying his team to a hard-fought 70-60 win.
Odd analogies aside, it is clear that Beard loves his players, especially those in Evans’ recruiting class (Justin Gray, Norense Odiase, Zach Smith, and Evans) because that group was the bridge from the Tubby Smith years to the success Tech is now experiencing. Thus, it’s easy to see why Beard didn’t want to see that group of players leave.