Texas Tech basketball: How notable coaches other than Beard did in their fourth year
With Chris Beard having now completed his fourth year as Texas Tech basketball coach, let’s look at how other notable coaches managed to fare in their fourth year.
Chris Beard’s fourth year as Texas Tech basketball head coach will be one we will forever remember. That’s because it will have the dubious distinction of being the season that was cut short by the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, which robbed us of the Big 12 and NCAA tournaments.
It’s tough to believe that it has only been four seasons on the job for Beard given all that he’s accomplished. After all, he’s already taken the program to places that we thought it would take a coach a least half a decade to get close to.
It’s one thing to take over a blue-blood program and get it back to the heights of the sport but to find a way to get a mid-tier program like Texas Tech to the final night of the NCAA Tournament in just three seasons is nothing short of miraculous.
In the eight seasons between the start of the Pat Knight era and the end of the Tubby Smith era, Tech had just two winning records. Knight went 19-16 in 2009-10 and Smith led his team to a 19-13 record in 2015-16. Of course, that was Smith’s final year on the job in Lubbock and the only NCAA Tournament bid for the Red Raiders since 2007.
In other words, Beard did not inherit a program that had a winning tradition or which had already established a foundation of success upon which he could build a winner. Yet that’s what he did. Thus far, he’s gone 94-44 (a winning percentage of .681, the best in Red Raider history).
Tech has not had a losing record during his time in charge. It is the first time that the program has had four-straight winning seasons since 2001-05. Prior to that, you would have to go back to 1992-97 to find a streak of at least four successful campaigns in a row.
What’s more, Beard has already won more NCAA Tournament games than any coach in program history. In fact, his eight wins in the Big Dance equals what the rest of the coaches in program history have managed to bring home as a group.
Quite a bit has happened in the last four years. Tech basketball has gone from being a time-kill during the football offseason to the pride of the university. The U.S.A. has gone from being too large to fill to being packed to the rafters on a game-by-game basis. Chris Beard has gone from a promising young coach to one of the most highly-respected leaders in the game. All in the span of four short years.
As I was thinking about how much Beard has done in just four years, I began to wonder if any coach in program history had taken the program to a level anywhere close to being in the same conversation as to where Beard has Tech hoops these days. So here’s a look at what the most notable coaches in program history have done in their fourth year and a look at where their programs stood at that point in their tenures.