Texas Tech is elevating assistant coach Mark Adams to the top job to replace Chris Beard after Beard left to take the Texas job earlier this month, Jeff Goodman of Stadium reported Monday night. 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 elevated to Associate Head Coach prior to the 2019-20 season.
A Texas Tech alumnus, 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 stint at his alma mater as the Director of Basketball Operations, then he followed him to Texas Tech where he helped build one of the most consistent defenses in college hoops. In every year but the first Texas Tech rated in the top-20 of KenPom’s adjusted defensive efficiency metrics. The unit ranked first nationally in 2018-19 that helped fuel the program’s run to a first-ever national championship game appearance.
Adams is not a big name but he has a big background as a coach that should quell any concerns for Tech fans. He has more than 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 via The Ringer in 2019.
He has garnered 15 Coach of the Year honors during his tenure as a head coach in his illustrious career. Adams steps in with big shoes to fill from Beard but should give the program real stability and continuity to help continue growing what he helped build.
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