Chris Beard cashes in on a new deal
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Do we now refer to Texas Tech as a Basketball school?
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I’m impressed with this guy. I thought OSU would embarrass our league this year. I was amazed in how his defense guarded the perimeter at the end of the season. He’ll have many starters back and he’ll be getting an extension soon. Great coaches in this league.
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@approxinfinity Oops! Not Beard! Fixed it.
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I think only 2 starters are returning for OSU but 6 rotation guys will be back total. Carroll, Smith & Solomon are big losses for them. He’ll have to prove he can recruit as all the guys he’s playing with were under the former regime’s
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@BShark This is relevant to absolutely nothing, but I do love your joke at the end of your posts.
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Most of the guys at OSU are still from Travis Ford. Underwood was only there a year, so he didn’t do much from a recruiting standpoint. I thought OSU would be a mess this year, but they aren’t awful. A couple of wins in the Big 12 tournament and they could legitimately get into the dance because they would own three wins against KU. The Big 12 continues to have really strong coaches, which will continue to make the league competitive, but they need more top end talent to make deeper runs in March.
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Yeah Boynton is going to have to recruit to stay competitive. He seems like a quality hire so far making out okay with other coaches players who maxed out their abilities.
He did find Smith in the transfer market that was absolutely the best guard on the floor Saturday when they crushed us.
He has a transfer guard coming in to replace him that could be decent. The other two recruits he’s got signed are + 200 ranked bigs. With 3 open spots and starting jobs to hand out I’m sure he’ll be aggressive in the graduate transfer market
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@BeddieKU23 I was going to say, his best option is to continue to be competitive with transfers while bringing in a few long-term frosh. Once he has established himself, I think he will be able to recruit just fine.
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The grad transfer market is actually the best place to build for a new coach. Coming in with just a year under his belt, its tough to compete with other schools that have established a long term relationship with a player. That makes it tough to get Power 5 type players. But if you can land one or two grad transfers to tide the program over while you are establishing those relationships, you can survive without a huge dropoff.
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I thought it was Stoolwater…
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BShark said:
@BeddieKU23 Weird, everyone thought Shaka would be so successful…
Not me. I have always said his record is all smoke and mirrors.
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@JayHawkFanToo I was being sarcastic because the view on this board is that he wouldn’t pan out. I know you, Beddie and myself all said it.
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Agreed. They have Michael Weathers sitting out this season, a transfer from Miami Ohio who averaged 16 pts as a freshman and is from Roeland Park Kansas. Kid will be pretty motivated to play KU. When he and his brother decided to transfer, KU was a team they mentioned they would be interested in. He ends up at OSU with 3 years left to replace Kendall Smith. Kendall Smith btw was a twice bounced transfer from UNLV then Cal State Northridge and finally the Big-12. Without Smith, not sure this Cowboys team is even in a position to make the tourney
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@BeddieKU23 Smith kicked our butt twice.
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@justanotherfan Maybe one or two of those guys.
But, what he REALLY needs to do is feast on players looking to go someplace else after the coach they committed to gets fired. There will be plenty of that going on in a few weeks. Combined with job hopping coaches, there should be 10-15 decent players out there looking for a new home and playing time.
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As @BeddieKU23 mentioned, OSU already has a guy in there that transferred. The benefit of the grad transfer is that they are eligible immediately. There’s no sitting out a year. OSU will need help next year. While Weathers is a nice piece, and they have two lower recruits coming in, they need immediate help as well. That’s why I was suggesting grad transfers - they need a guy or two for the 2018-19 season. Maybe they take on one additional transfer that will help in 2019-20, but they need some guys to bridge the gap between the two seasons.
Beard could help himself by doing the same, honestly. He needs one or two guys that could help out next year, regardless of the following year. It would certainly help to follow up the best year in Tech history with a solid year rather than finishing 9th or 10th in the conference next season.
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TTech will regret this big time in 3 years.
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@justanotherfan Agreed, one or two grad transfers would be fine. But, what I meant was for them to look for freshmen who are committed right now, then their coach gets fired, and then could come in and contribute next season.
UConn has a couple of 4 stars that I would already start calling if I was Boyton. Scenarios like that are more what I’m referring to than taking transfers who need to sit a year.
Chris Mullen has to be on the hot seat. He has at least one player they should be interested in.
Iowa has a top 50 kid that is a lifelong Iowa fan, but who knows what happens if McCaffrey is fired.
Chris Collinsworth at Northwestern is questionable. In his first season with 100% his own players, Northwestern sucked. They have a top 100 recruit that I’d think OSU could look at.
Minnesota may can little Pitino. Oturu may become available if that happened. But he is a Minnesota kid so it depends on who they hire.
Georgia Tech may just get rid of Pastner. He isn’t good enough to be worth any sort of headache. He has a top 50 recruit.
Once the coaching carousel gets really going, a 2nd year guy like Boyton needs to capitalize. It is about the only way to make up ground recruiting when you are basically a no name to this point.
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Those would be some good pickups. I don’t know if OSU is on the radar for any of those guys. They often end up going to one of their other finalists in those situations. If OSU lost out on a recruit to a school that cans its coach, Boynton should keep an eye on any of those guys because they could certainly help quite a bit from day one.
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I know. It always amazes me how Smart’s career is based on one win over KU.
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@JayHawkFanToo Pretty much. He never did all that much of note at VCU otherwise. Heck that team barely made the tournament.
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Beard did a lot of what you have mentioned him doing when he came to Tech and I think he will continue to seek talent in any form.
He got Brandone Francis from Florida, a former Top 40 prospect who couldn’t piss in an ocean while he was there. He has looked pretty good this year and looks poised for a big role next season. The other transfer was Tommy Hamilton who was okay at Depaul and has given Beard some really good rotation minutes stretching the defense this year. Niam Stevenson was a Juco transfer that helped last seasons squad and was assuming the PG duties while Evans was hurt this year.
He found local prospect Culver and unheralded Zhaire Smith, two foundations of this years team. Zhaire Smith has a chance to go in the NBA at some point IMO. Culver is going to be a great 4 year guard for Tech. He found Euro PG Morretti really late in the spring and he’s given them back up PG minutes all season long. Tech might have been even better if their top Juco prospect Brangers hadn’t left the team to be closer to home where he had an ill family member. Brangers was the top Juco shooter in the country playing on that team that emulated their system after the Golden State Warriors.
For next year Beard has three prospects that look poised to play immediately next season. Khavon Moore is the prize right now being a Top 75 recruit nationally who had Florida, OU, Alabama among others fighting for him. That’s big when your bringing a Top 100 guy to Lubbock of all places. Kyler Edwards is probably one of the more underrated guards in HS, played at Findlay Prep and there’s been some talk that he’ll move up and have a chance to surprise some people. Corphew, a Juco transfer Wing had KU interest initially out of HS in the spring, went to Texas A&M for a year, dropped back down to Juco and now ends up with Beard.
So far one of key traits I’m seeing with Beard is no matter where he finds these kids they improve once they are coached by him. Francis & Hamilton ran out of options at their other schools and the transfer year off seemed to work well for them. Culver, Smith & Morretti all came to College with little fan-fare and have exceeded expectations as freshman. Juco kids come in ready to play. Seeing good things so far from him
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@BShark We are always saying Shaka did nothing but beat KU but that really isn’t true. He actually had a typical winning mid-major career for a coach going up to P5.
He had a .744 record at VCU, which included their move into the Atlantic 10. Although he didn’t win any regular season championships, he did win 2 of six conference postseason tourneys, getting into the Dance when they might not have been invited as an at-large. First year they won the Not Invited to Even the Not Invited Tournament (CBI) (aside: a best of 3 championship series–don’t we wish the other tourney would do this?). He also had a 10-10 record against ranked teams, not really very shabby for a mid-major.
I am not saying that Shaka is great by any means, but he was considered a success at VCU even without the KU game. People need to let go of the Shaka thing. Yes, it was his career highlight, and yes, he made the mistake of referring to it once a few years ago. Wow, does our scorned fanbase hold grudges!
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Bring up Fran and you will really stir up the pot.
Good points he was good at VCU. I think he should have stayed there, he had a good gig but obviously he had dreams of moving up the ladder.
There are games that stick with fans no matter what. I think it gets worse when its a tournament game given our fragile history for exiting painfully.
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@BeddieKU23 Then it should really hurt us to know that Shaka also managed to beat Wich State in the tourney the year after he beat us…
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mayjay said:
@BeddieKU23 Then it should really hurt us to know that Shaka also managed to beat Wich State in the tourney the year after he beat us…
Ouch.
