Hardwood hot takes: Chris Beard is college basketball’s best coach

Below you will find the first edition of “Hardwood Hot takes”, a weekly post where we will tell you our opinion on anything and everything college basketball.

Get rid of all conferences

There’s an easy hot-button issue I want to start the first edition of Hardwood Hot Takes with. One that has plenty of people mad at the governing body of college athletics and the idea of the NCAA altogether. … conferences.

We should disband them immediately.

That’s right, your father’s beloved Big East isn’t walking through that door anytime soon. Honestly, when they first formed the concept was just to get neighboring schools to play each other more. It was an efficient and cost-effective operation. It lessened the demands on everyone involved and it just remained that way ever since.

If you’re reading this Mark Emmert, abolish conferences this instant. Goodbye ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12, SEC, all of them should be gone. It’s 2020, the idea your competition for the majority of the regular season is based off region is ludicrous.

There are so many other ways the college basketball season should operate. I got one word to help make everything better: tiers. Within the weekly Associated Press Top 25 Poll, the teams should be split into five tiers (teams ranked 1-5, teams ranked 6-10, teams ranked 11-15, teams ranked 16-20, and teams ranked 21-25) and each week –probably Saturday (look NCAA executives, no missed school!) to keep with the college football traditions and avoid the NFL– each team within that tier has to play another team from that same tier.

I know what you’re thinking, 25 and five are odd numbers, which would leave someone out and making my big bold plan a fallacy from the start. To which I reply, you’re wrong. What I did not add above is one team per week gets a bye leaving us with 24 teams (12 games) each week that all feature two ranked opponents battling it out.

In the first week of play, the number-one ranked team would get the bye as they earned that honor but from then on the team who has the best record in these Top 25 games would get the option of having a bye — in case there are teams with the same record the team is ranked higher would get priority.

The higher-seeded team would get home-court advantage. We have now created guaranteed must-see television that could feature a variety of teams getting the opportunity to prove they are underrated (or overrated).

Teams could fill out their non-Top 25 games as they pleased and we would still have all of the Feast Week tournaments that have become a time-honored tradition in college basketball. The Top 25 games would take the place for conference play.

This simple solution also will help the committee when it comes time to choosing the NCAA Tournament field. Teams can no longer run scared of the lower-level teams with high talent or let petty grievances get in the way of seeing two top programs go at each other. Just think of this like the Champions Classic but times a billion.

Chris Beard is the best coach in college basketball

A staple of any great hot take is ranking or comparing peers to one another. Everyone loves a good “Greatest of all time” debate, every sport, every hobby, every art, etc. has someone who people deem the G.O.A.T. of their field. I won’t go that far here but I am ready to say Texas Tech Red Raiders head coach, Chris Beard is the best coach on the sidelines today.

The program came up just short of winning a national championship last year, falling 85-77 to Virginia. Minnesota Timberwolves rookie — and the sixth overall pick in the 2019 NBA Draft — Jarrett Culver led the charge for the team last year, yet, he and nine other players from last seasons’ group did not return to Beard’s team. Four of those departures included senior rotation players (Brandone Francis, Matt Mooney, Norense Odiase and Tariq Owens).

In 2019, their experience and defense was the driving force behind their 31-7 record. The team was in their third season with Beard in Lubbock, Texas and was coming off a run to the Elite Eight the season before. And yet, the team did not rest on its laurels. Beard had sparked a change in the program and the fuse was ready to blow.

With the help of his aggressive “no middle” defensive approach, the Red Raiders morphed into a defensive juggernaut overnight. Despite the final score totaling 162 points, both Texas Tech and Virginia finished last season as two of the top defensive units in the nation. Ken Pomeroy’s stat website kenpom.com had Beard’s team top his ranking of defensive efficiency adjusted for opponents. In that metric, the Red Raiders only allowed 84.1 points per 100.

This year, with a mostly new group their standing, has slipped slightly (up to 89.7 points per 100 possessions) but they clock in with the 12th best defensive efficiency in the country.

Beard has cemented the Red Raiders spot among the elites in just four seasons. While they already have amassed more losses in 22 games (eight) than in 38 games (seven), the team is right on track to meet expectations within the Big 12. They were projected to finish third in the preseason and sit a half-game back of the 13th ranked West Virginia Mountaineers.

Though he hasn’t been in the spotlight for a long time, Beard has been a raging success at every stop in his coaching career. He began at the NCCAA level with the McMurry White Hawks where they made the regional final. He moved on to Division II and spent two seasons with the Angelo State Rams where he finished with a .758 winning percentage. Then he jumped to Little Rock for a season and just took them to first place in their division and took down Purdue in a Round of 64 upset.

Through and through, Beard’s been a winner and his ability to turn Lubbock basketball-crazy has not gone unnoticed. He is simply, the best coach in the country.

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