Texas Tech top assistant Mark Adams will become head coach after Chris Beard’s departure

Texas Tech is advancing associate head coach Mark Adams to supplant Chris Beard, athletic director Kirby Hocutt affirmed Monday night via social media. A news conference presenting Adams as the Red Raiders new head coach is set for Tuesday, as indicated by Hocutt.

Beard left Texas Tech for Texas a week ago after five seasons in Lubbock.

Shortly after Beard’s takeoff was declared, Mark Adams arose as a prime candidate to supplant him as head coach. Thought about one of the elite defensive minds in college basketball, Adams had been an assistant under Beard since 2015 while they were at Arkansas-Little Rock. Texas Tech’s defense positioned 20th nationally in changed defensive proficiency this previous season in the wake of ranking in the top 10 the past three seasons.

Mark Adams, a Texas Tech alum, has head-coaching experience at five schools: Clarendon College, Wayland Baptist, West Texas A&M, Texas-Pan American, and Howard College.

Texas Tech is elevating assistant coach Mark Adams to the top job to supplant Chris many a Beard left to take the Texas job earlier this month, the school reported. Adams, the top assistant on Beard’s Red Raiders staff, has been with the program since Beard took over the gig in 2016. He was raised to Associate Head Coach preceding the 2019-20 season.

A Texas Tech alumnus, Mark Adams, who graduated from the school in 1979, is a long-time understudy of Beard. He served on Beard’s staff at Little Rock as an assistant in 2015-16 after a two-season stretch at his alma mater as the Director of Basketball Operations, at that point he followed him to Texas Tech where he helped assemble one of the most consistent defenses in college hoops.

In every year, however, the first Texas Tech appraised in the top-20 of KenPom’s changed defensive efficiency metrics. The unit ranked first nationally in 2018-19 that aided fuel the program’s rushed to a first-since forever national championship game appearance.

Mark Adams is certainly not a major name yet he has a major background as a coach that ought to subdue any worries for Tech fans. He has over three decades worth of head coaching experience at the NAIA, junior college, and Division II levels, including at Texas-Pan American, Howard College, and West Texas A&M. Adams led Howard College to the 2010 NJCAA National Championship and was named the NJCAA’s National Coach of the Year.

“I think he’s the best coach in college basketball that people don’t really know who he is,” Beard once said of him through The Ringer in 2019.

He has gathered 15 Coach of the Year praises during his residency as a head coach in his illustrious career. Mark Adams steps in with enormous shoes to fill from Beard yet should give the program real stability and continuity to help keep developing what he helped fabricate.

Bucks colleague Darvin Ham likewise spoke to Texas Tech about the vacancy at his alma mater, however, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski announced Monday that he decided to remain with Milwaukee and keep on pursuing a head-coaching position in the NBA.