Texas Tech Basketball: Head coach Chris Beard’s fast track to stardom

In the coaching lifestyle, seven years is not a long time, but in that time Texas Tech Basketball’s Chris Beard has reached the coaching summit. Here is a look at his journey to the top.

Seven years in most lines of work is a long time, but in coaching, seven years can go by in the blink of an eye. Less than three months ago, Texas Tech Basketball lost a national championship in overtime to Virginia but the Red Raiders are still riding a high into the offseason, and the man at the head of the ship, Chris Beard is on a ride of his own.

I’m not sure there is another coach in America that has been on a skyrocketing trajectory that matches what Beard has been able to do since the 2012-13 season when he got his first NCAA head coaching gig at now Division II McMurry University.

His coaching career began as a graduate assistant at Texas under Tom Penders in 1991, followed by another four-year stint in the same capacity at Incarnate Word. He then spent three years as an assistant, the first season at Abilene Christian then two years at North Texas. In 1999, Beard was a named the head coach at Fort Scott Community College in Kansas. After one year he moved on to Seminole State Junior College, and then in 2001, he got his first taste of basketball at the NCAA level as the associate head coach at Texas Tech. He would stay in Lubbock until the end of the 2011 season, after which he coached the South Carolina Warriors, a semi-pro team that played in the American Basketball Association, during their inaugural season in 2011-12.

After that year, Beard’s NCAA head coaching career began with his stint at McMurry, and seven years later he has been full steam ahead. Here is a look at how Beard has gone from a small Division II school to a national runner-up in the Big Dance in just seven years.