“We got it right.”
On April 1, Texas Longhorns athletics director Chris Del Conte was on a plane with new head basketball coach Chris Beard, watching Beard’s emotions as he processed ending his enormously successful time leading the Texas Tech Red Raiders and prepared himself for a homecoming on the Forty Acres. Those moments solidified Del Conte’s belief that the administration’s top choice was the best choice for the future of Longhorns basketball.
A little farther west and a little while later, UTEP head coach Rodney Terry, the longtime assistant under Rick Barnes, heard the news of Beard’s decision and felt similarly to Del Conte, calling it a “home-run hire” and quickly coming to the belief that Beard’s “gonna blow it out of the water” in Austin, he said during a Zoom meeting with reporters on Wednesday.