Tech’s Chris Beard: If you can compete in Big 12, ‘you can beat anybody’ in Tournament

When Chris Beard took over as Texas Tech basketball coach, his first goal was to make his program relevant in the Big 12.

“If you can get in the top half of the Big 12 and compete, you can beat anybody once the tournament starts,” he said Sunday. “That’s been proven several times in recent history here.”

Texas Tech certainly reaped the rewards of toppling Big 12 power Kansas, finishing two games ahead of the Jayhawks along with co-champion Kansas State.

Before this season, the last team to win the Big 12 regular-season title before KU’s 14 year run of championships was Oklahoma State, which made the 2004 Final Four.

The Red Raiders helped end the streak this year and made the Final Four, and now they’re facing Virginia in Monday’s NCAA championship game.

Winning the school’s first national title has been Beard’s bigger goal all along. Texas Tech would join KU and Oklahoma State as the only Big 12 Conference members, current or former, to win a NCAA men’s basketball title.

“Our goal has never been to make a tournament. It’s been to win the tournament,” he said. “It’s easy to talk about, and really, really hard to do. But that’s where we started this whole thing, was just trying to have the expectations and the vision.”

This story was originally published April 7, 2019 at 3:09 PM with the headline "Tech’s Chris Beard: If you can compete in Big 12, ‘you can beat anybody’ in Tournament."