Brian Hamilton of The Athletic has a story about the next coach. Hamilton covered Tech extensively in the 2019 national championship game run. He previously worked at Sports Illustrated and Chicago Tribune, so he is familiar with program but no ties. As a favor to the poors where the $2 a month subscription is out of their price range, here's a portion of the story about the job itself:
"Walk into the Womble Basketball Center, find your way to a gym and there they are: inconceivably massive video screens covering the entire upper wall on one side of the space. It’s not the only tricked-out part of the building, but it’s the most indicative: The $31 million facility is about as lavish as it gets in college basketball.
So the next Texas Tech men’s head coach walks into a resourced-enough gig. The school reported $8.89 million in spending on men’s basketball in 2020-21, per U.S. Department of Education data, which put it sixth in the Big 12 – not ideal, but not prohibitive to success. More anecdotally, games at United Supermarkets Arena border on spectacle when things are going good, an invaluable potential advantage in the country’s most demanding league.
Nor does Texas Tech lag behind in the emerging world of NIL deals. The Matador Club, a non-profit collective, and Lubbock-based marketing agency Level 13 have extended $25,000 deals to dozens of Red Raiders athletes. In all, it’s a job located in a state with arguably the best high school talent in the country, with some perks to offer said talent.
Any perceived drawbacks are more or less uncontrollable. The Big 12 is going to be very good. It is going to be hard to win in the league, regardless of resource level. The talent level must remain consistently high, which means convincing players to sign up for a market that isn’t the flashiest around.
It requires hyper-diligence in recruiting; get a player to campus and show them the bells and whistles, and here’s guessing Texas Tech’s chances with that player increase. But a coach has to be charismatic and persistent enough to make those visits happen."
He also lists seven possibilities for the job, including these four. One that is intriguing to me is Sampson's son, but he acknowledges without HC experience, it would be a tough jump. He obviously does not expect Terry to get the full-time job at Texas.
Grant McCasland, North Texas head coach. The first name that has come up in pretty much any discussion about the job. He has basketball life spent in Texas, the 66.8 winning percentage in six years at North Texas and, for what it’s worth, a couple long-ago years spent as a director of operations with Texas Tech. Bringing some of Scott Drew’s love-and-happiness-for-all vibe also would be helpful, given what prompted the job opening.
Al Pinkins, Texas Tech assistant coach. On his second run with the Red Raiders — he was on the staff when the program reached the Elite Eight in 2018 — Pinkins may be the internally preferred candidate among players, at least. We’ll see how much of a voice they’re given in the process. Pinkins served as Florida’s interim head coach last spring after Mike White decamped for Georgia.
Kellen Sampson, Houston assistant coach. Is there a clear path of succession at Houston from Kelvin Sampson to his son? Or is that just an assumption everyone makes, and there are no guarantees? Even though it’s a soon-to-be Big 12 rival of his father’s program, it’s a pretty good situation for a first head coaching gig. And Sampson understands personal investment with players comes first, and the demands come only after that.
Rodney Terry, Texas acting head coach. Stay with us here. It may be that Terry isn’t even on the market or that his ties to Chris Beard, limited as they are, make this a hard sell in Lubbock. But if everyone is right about Terry’s recruiting chops, that energy and his origin story as a high school coach align with the profile of Joey McGuire, Kirby Hocutt’s latest football hire. In fact, you could make an objective argument that Texas Tech is a better job for Terry than Texas is.
And the hire is...
It’s a much more complicated decision than it would be if Adams was terminated for the results. This isn’t that. Decision-makers should prioritize some healing properties in any candidate. Sampson would be a jolt-of-energy pick. But if it’s understandably deemed too big a job to hand someone who hasn’t been a head coach before, McCasland or Terry make sense.
"Walk into the Womble Basketball Center, find your way to a gym and there they are: inconceivably massive video screens covering the entire upper wall on one side of the space. It’s not the only tricked-out part of the building, but it’s the most indicative: The $31 million facility is about as lavish as it gets in college basketball.
So the next Texas Tech men’s head coach walks into a resourced-enough gig. The school reported $8.89 million in spending on men’s basketball in 2020-21, per U.S. Department of Education data, which put it sixth in the Big 12 – not ideal, but not prohibitive to success. More anecdotally, games at United Supermarkets Arena border on spectacle when things are going good, an invaluable potential advantage in the country’s most demanding league.
Nor does Texas Tech lag behind in the emerging world of NIL deals. The Matador Club, a non-profit collective, and Lubbock-based marketing agency Level 13 have extended $25,000 deals to dozens of Red Raiders athletes. In all, it’s a job located in a state with arguably the best high school talent in the country, with some perks to offer said talent.
Any perceived drawbacks are more or less uncontrollable. The Big 12 is going to be very good. It is going to be hard to win in the league, regardless of resource level. The talent level must remain consistently high, which means convincing players to sign up for a market that isn’t the flashiest around.
It requires hyper-diligence in recruiting; get a player to campus and show them the bells and whistles, and here’s guessing Texas Tech’s chances with that player increase. But a coach has to be charismatic and persistent enough to make those visits happen."
He also lists seven possibilities for the job, including these four. One that is intriguing to me is Sampson's son, but he acknowledges without HC experience, it would be a tough jump. He obviously does not expect Terry to get the full-time job at Texas.
Grant McCasland, North Texas head coach. The first name that has come up in pretty much any discussion about the job. He has basketball life spent in Texas, the 66.8 winning percentage in six years at North Texas and, for what it’s worth, a couple long-ago years spent as a director of operations with Texas Tech. Bringing some of Scott Drew’s love-and-happiness-for-all vibe also would be helpful, given what prompted the job opening.
Al Pinkins, Texas Tech assistant coach. On his second run with the Red Raiders — he was on the staff when the program reached the Elite Eight in 2018 — Pinkins may be the internally preferred candidate among players, at least. We’ll see how much of a voice they’re given in the process. Pinkins served as Florida’s interim head coach last spring after Mike White decamped for Georgia.
Kellen Sampson, Houston assistant coach. Is there a clear path of succession at Houston from Kelvin Sampson to his son? Or is that just an assumption everyone makes, and there are no guarantees? Even though it’s a soon-to-be Big 12 rival of his father’s program, it’s a pretty good situation for a first head coaching gig. And Sampson understands personal investment with players comes first, and the demands come only after that.
Rodney Terry, Texas acting head coach. Stay with us here. It may be that Terry isn’t even on the market or that his ties to Chris Beard, limited as they are, make this a hard sell in Lubbock. But if everyone is right about Terry’s recruiting chops, that energy and his origin story as a high school coach align with the profile of Joey McGuire, Kirby Hocutt’s latest football hire. In fact, you could make an objective argument that Texas Tech is a better job for Terry than Texas is.
And the hire is...
It’s a much more complicated decision than it would be if Adams was terminated for the results. This isn’t that. Decision-makers should prioritize some healing properties in any candidate. Sampson would be a jolt-of-energy pick. But if it’s understandably deemed too big a job to hand someone who hasn’t been a head coach before, McCasland or Terry make sense.
