Kirby Hocutt tried to put a brave face on it. He tried spin it.
Call the Texas Tech Red Raiders athletics director 0-for-2 on that count. And that’s not even including the real reason for Hocutt’s sad press conference on Thursday — discussing the massive loss of head coach Chris Beard, who is now the new coach of the Texas Longhorns.
Hocutt started off by trying to describe losing the most successful basketball coach in program history to an in-state rival as a change in direction instead of a setback. The number of people who buy that is somewhere close to zero and almost certainly does not actually include Hocutt in any other capacity than his Thursday press conference.