Texas Tech Basketball: 10 candidates to replace Mark Adams as head coach

After less than two full seasons as head coach at Texas Tech Basketball, Mark Adams recently resigned from the school after a brief suspension regarding allegations of inappropriate comments made towards his players. A former assistant and longtime junior college head coach, Adams finishes his career in Lubbock with a record of 43-25, anchored down by a poor season this year.

Adams spent time as the head coach at five different colleges in the state of Texas, most notably a five-year run at then-Texas-Pan American in the 90’s, winning just 44 games across five seasons as a D1 head coach. After winning a junior college national title at Howard College, he returned to D1 as director of basketball operations on Tubby Smith’s Texas Tech staff in 2013. Adams would then depart for Little Rock two years later and follow head coach Chris Beard back to Texas Tech a year later.

He became known as an elite defensive coach over his five years on Beard’s staff, helping lead this program to their first appearance in the national title game in 2019. When Beard departed for Texas in 2021, Adams was promoted to head coach and had a great first season, winning 27 games, finishing 3rd in the Big 12 and leading the Red Raiders back to the Sweet Sixteen. Unfortunately, his second season was not going as successfully, finishing second-to-last with a 5-13 mark in Big 12 play. His suspension kept him out of Texas Tech’s Big 12 Tournament loss to West Virginia on Wednesday.

For the second time in three offseasons, the Texas Tech head coaching job is open, but it’s a little more complicated this time around. The Red Raiders likely aren’t going to just promote their top assistant and maintain the status quo, especially with how Adams has left the program after a decade of success at various levels. Texas Tech will certainly cast a wide net in the coming weeks, but there will certainly be an attractive list of candidates that could seek the job.

Today, we’ll be taking a preliminary peak at a number of candidates for this job and examining how they’ve gotten here and how they’d fit in Lubbock. With the recent changes, Texas Tech will likely want a leader who wants to stay in Lubbock for the long haul, though the most important thing is winning and competing for conference and national relevance. Let’s get right into some of these names, proceeding alphabetically.