Assessing the new coach

Not a home run, but that is more than you can expect on our budget, so we will call it a solid extra-base hit. Not great, but certainly not bad.

What I do like about Beard is that he has experience both as head coach at different levels and as an assistant at a couple different D1 programs. I suspect coaches may learn more about some aspects of coaching at the lower levels where it is harder work, and he has done it at three different strata of the basketball world. Add to that the fact that he has been an assistant at a level comparable to ours (North Texas) and also at Texas Tech for a decade, seven of them under Bobby Knight. While I have no use for Knight as a person, even his detractors would admit that he has a great basketball mind, so Beard is bound to have learned a few things about the game.

In short, this is a guy who has paid his dues, not one of the fancy-dans who rides the coat-tails of a high-profile coach into an immediate D1 stint. I like that. He ought to be hungry.