Texas Tech is elevating assistant coach Mark Adams to the top job to replace Chris Beard after Beard left to take the job in Texas earlier this month, the school announced. Adams, the main assistant to the Beard Red Raiders team, has been on the program since Beard took office in 2016. He was promoted to associate head coach before the 2019-20 season.
A former Texas Tech student, Adams, who graduated from school in 1979, is a replacement for Beard for a long time. He served on the Beard team in Little Rock as an assistant in 2015-16 after a two-season stint in his alma mater as the Director of Basketball Operations, then he followed him to Texas Tech, where he helped build one of the most effective defenses. consistent in college hoops. In all years, except the first Texas Tech ranked in the top 20 in KenPom’s adjusted defensive efficiency metrics. The unit ranked first nationally in 2018-19, which helped propel the program’s run to an appearance in a national championship for the first time.
Adams is not a big name, but he has a great experience as a coach that should dispel any concerns of tech fans. He has more than three decades of experience as a head coach at NAIA, junior college and Division II levels, including Texas-Pan American, Howard College and West Texas A&M. Adams led Howard College for the 2010 NJCAA National Championship and was named NJCAA National Coach of the Year.
“I think he’s the best college basketball coach that people don’t really know who he is,” Beard once said of him through The Ringer in 2019.
He received 15 Coach of the Year honors during his tenure as head coach in his illustrious career. Adams takes action with big shoes to fill for Beard, but he must give the program real stability and continuity to help continue to grow what he helped build.