Vic Trilli got the phone call he had been waiting for in June 1997. After almost a decade as an assistant at the University of Texas, Trilli was set to become head coach at North Texas, his first chance to lead a program by himself.
From Austin, Trilli pointed his car north toward Denton. But before he left, he took a phone call from a former student assistant.
“I’ll meet you up there,” Trilli was told.
Chris Beard was in Denton even before his new boss.
Trilli laughs when he retells the story now. He was going to hire Beard anyway, but the audacity of a then-24-year-old with one season of full-time coaching experience to assume he was getting a job on a Division I bench is the best way Trilli could get across all he knows about Beard.