Texas Tech Asks ‘Why Not Us?’ as Red Raiders Are One Win Away From First National Title

MINNEAPOLIS – Chris Beard was taken aback, almost offended by the premise of a reporter’s question after his Texas Tech team had punched its ticket to the national title game and a matchup with Virginia.

He questioned the unlikeliness of this team – and this program – to reach this point.

“I respect the question, but why not us?” he responded. “We’ve got good players … we won the Big 12 regular season title. We’re a good team. We’ve got good players.”

Beard is spot-on but there’s also a level of accuracy with the reporter’s question. This was a team picked towards the bottom of the Big 12 season after the Red Raiders lost five of their top seven players, including a lottery pick in Zhaire Smith.

No one saw this coming.

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Beard and the Red Raiders give optimism to everyone else. Kentucky and Duke, with their mountain of McDonald’s All-Americans, are sitting home watching this group – one that featured a trio of transfers, a local kid from Lubbock and an Italian point guard. Beard just knocked Michigan State’s Hall of Fame Coach Tom Izzo, a mainstay in the Final Four, to reach college basketball’s finale.

Maybe new Texas A&M coach Buzz Williams can do it. Maybe Scott Drew can get here from Baylor. Shoot, maybe there’s even hope for the Boston Colleges and DePauls of the world.

Texas Tech was considered the most difficult job in the league when I polled Big 12 veteran coaches for my Chain of Command series earlier this season. The program had never made the Elite Eight until Beard arrived.

In fact, the Red Raiders’ three NCAA Tournament wins last season were the program’s first wins in the tournament in 13 years. 

However, Beard wasn’t celebrating after everyone cleared out of the locker room besides his girlfriend and three daughters. He put the box score from the game in his right pants pocket, which he does after each game, and he’ll keep it there until Monday night. He even admitted he might not change those pants until the national title game. Then he took out the spiral notebook he uses to record all his thoughts and notes, and counted the number of empty pages remaining.

Four.

“It’ll be perfect,” he said. “It’ll fit. I’ve never filled it up this much.”

Then he went on to educate his three daughters on the level of respect he has for Tony Bennett and the Virginia players for the way they have handled last year’s adversity in which they became the first No. 1 seed to lose in the first round.

“With such class,” Beard said. “It was unbelievable, just unbelievable.”

If Beard can win one more game, Texas Tech will join programs such as Duke, North Carolina, Kansas, UConn, Kentucky, Louisville, Villanova, Florida, Syracuse, Arizona, Michigan State, Maryland, UCLA and Arkansas to have won a national title in the last 25 years.

Which program doesn’t quite fit?

This is no knock on Beard; In fact, it’s the ultimate compliment. He’s done the unthinkable and taken a program that most didn’t anticipate would sustain success and turned it into the ultimate in relevance.

But it almost didn’t happen.

Jarrett Culver was on the bench with three fouls early in the second half. Tariq Owens, the most dominant player on the court for the first 20 minutes, went down with what appeared to be a serious ankle injury and wasn’t effective when he returned to the game. But it was former Air Force and South Dakota guard Matt Mooney who carried Texas Tech until the closing minutes, when Culver stepped up and helped close the deal on Michigan State.

Beard said there weren’t any nerves even though all eyes were on him in his matchup with Izzo in front of more than 70,000 people at U.S. Bank Stadium. It’s because he hears balls bouncing when he leaves the office late at night and he knows that his players often match his work ethic.

“These guys work,” Beard said. “All of them.”

Now it’s Texas Tech vs. Virginia on Monday night for the national championship. Bennett is the household name for what he’s done the last half-dozen years in the ACC, while Beard is a newcomer after bouncing around the last eight years from the ABA to Division III McMurry to Division II Angelo State, Little Rock, UNLV for a couple weeks and finally Texas Tech.

This matchup pits arguably the two best defenses in the country against one another. The two teams do it differently, Virginia with its pack line and Texas Tech being more aggressive, but they are equally as effective.

“Defense wins championships,” Owens said. “Defense can be fun.”

“People may try and say it’ll be boring,” Beard added, “but it’s the national championship.”

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