Texas Tech’s Beard consents to 6-year extension

Texas Tech trainer Chris Beard agreed on Monday to a brand new contract that can make one of the crucial highest-paid coaches in faculty basketball.

Beard signed a brand new six-year contract that can pay him $four.575 million yearly, preserving him beneath contract in the course of the 2024-25 season. His annual wage is now the third-highest within the nation, in the back of simplest Kentucky’s John Calipari and Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, in line with USA Lately’s training wage database.

“Thanks to President Schovanec, Kirby Hocutt, Tony Hernandez, Chancellor Mitchell and the Board of Regents for making this robust dedication to each me and our males’s basketball program,” Beard mentioned by means of commentary. “Thanks to our avid gamers and group of workers, each former and present, on your dedication to profitable. Particular because of our fanatics and our scholars on your improbable reinforce and fervour. In combination now we have completed some good stuff up to now 3 years however we don’t seem to be happy and can proceed operating tirelessly to construct one of the crucial very best faculty basketball systems within the country.”

Beard was once named AP Nationwide Trainer of the 12 months this previous season after main Texas Tech to the nationwide championship recreation sooner than falling to Virginia. The Crimson Raiders received a proportion of the Large 12 regular-season identify sooner than making this system’s first-ever Ultimate 4 look. That run got here at the heels of Tech’s Elite 8 look in 2018.

For the reason that Crimson Raiders went 18-14 in Beard’s first season in Lubbock, they have got long past 58-17 general and Eight-2 within the NCAA match.

“In simplest 3 years, Chris Beard has increased Texas Tech to the higher echelon of school basketball,” athletic director Kirby Hocutt mentioned in a commentary. “The 2018 Elite 8, and this 12 months’s look within the Nationwide Championship recreation has raised all of the profile of Texas Tech Athletics and is a supply of serious satisfaction for all Crimson Raiders. I’m appreciative of the ongoing loyalty and private dedication that Chris has made to proceed to guide our program into the longer term. He’s broadly revered as one of the crucial very best coaches within the country and I may now not be extra excited that via more than a few assets, now we have been ready to speculate into our basketball program at one of the crucial easiest ranges within the country.”

Beard have been discussed in short with more than one training vacancies this Spring, however did not display a lot passion in leaving Lubbock. Beard spent 10 seasons as an assistant trainer beneath Bob Knight at Texas Tech from 2001-2011 and returned as the pinnacle trainer in 2016.