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

Ulric Maligi

Head coaching experience may be vital in this search, but there’s a number of other current assistant coaches who could be great additions at Texas Tech. Maligi would not only check those boxes but it would be a return trip for him, having served the Red Raiders as an assistant under Beard, and was certainly considered for the top job when Adams got the call instead.

Maligi has never been a head coach but has been a D1 collegiate assistant for much of the last two decades. He’s bounced around a number of schools, including stints at Stephen F. Austin, Houston, SMU, and Texas A&M. The Red Raiders brought him aboard in 2019 and he followed Beard to Texas two years later. He spent this past season as associate head coach under Jerome Tang at Kansas State and was certainly an important part of the Wildcats’ turnaround in the Big 12 this year.

There are so many reasons why Maligi would make sense for Texas Tech. They already know him, he knows the Big 12 really well, and it would be addition by subtraction in taking him away from Kansas State. He’s also an experienced coach who can recruit at a high level and has experience at nearly every prominent school in the state. It all comes down to if the Red Raiders want to bring in someone without head coaching experience.