» Texas Tech and SFA coaches are pals pitted in the first round.
DALLAS — They were kids back then, not necessarily in the eyes of the law but certainly in terms of temperament. When they made their lists of everything they planned to achieve during the rest of their lives, they did not include meeting like this.
They could not have dreamed of it.
Under an undeniably receding hairline Wednesday, Kyle Keller’s hangdog eyes lit up at the mere thought of those days 22 years ago, when he and Chris Beard had no money, no family and the world at their feet.
Keller was a 20-something assistant basketball coach at UTSA. Beard was a 20-something assistant coach at Incarnate Word. Keller shared an apartment with another assistant named Jeremy Cox, and the three of them knew all of the tricks that underpaid single dudes needed to get by.
Fond memories
Beard, now the head coach at Texas Tech, fondly recalls ordering off the McDonald’s dollar menu and filling water cups with Sprite. Keller, now the head coach at Stephen F. Austin, remembers juicier details, including the ones about the best ice houses on the north side of San Antonio, and the Holiday Inn where enterprising young professionals could take advantage of excellent happy-hour drink specials if they hit the lobby at the right time.
“We were all trying to figure out where we were going, hoping to make it in this career and if we could be somebody, just hang on,” Keller said. “But we had fun.” They will have fun Thursday, too, even if they did not ask for this. When Keller finally got his first Division I head coaching job two years ago, he and Beard agreed not to schedule each other, because they were too close as friends. Now the NCAA has done it for them, pitting Beard’s third-seeded Red Raiders against Keller’s 14th-seeded Lumberjacks in a first-round Tournament game at American Airlines Center.
One positive, as Keller pointed out, is that one of them is guaranteed to move on. Another, as noted by Beard, is that in a profession dominated by fancy suits and slick hairdos, there will be a symbolic victory for every coach who took the long, slow road.
“The best coaches in college basketball are at places nobody has ever heard of,” Beard said. “This just kind of validates that there’s great coaches at every level. If talking about myself represents those guys getting opportunities, it’s worth it.”
Look at where he found his opportunities. Keller joked that Beard has had “62 jobs in 25 years,” and it wasn’t as much of an exaggeration as you might think. After four years as a student assistant at Texas and his one year at Incarnate Word, Beard made stops at Abilene Christian and North Texas before junior-college head coaching stints at Fort Scott and Seminole State.
His big break came in the form of a spot on Bob Knight’s staff at Tech, where he stayed for 10 years before striking out as a head coach in the now-defunct ABA, at McMurry, Angelo State and Little Rock.
As Keller said, “he’s won everywhere,” including a trip to the second round of the NCAA Tournament with Little Rock two years ago, and now Beard has put together what has the potential to be the best Red Raiders team ever.
“The fact that he’s had to work for it — fight for everything he’s got in his career and everything he’s got in his life — means everything,” Tech assistant Sean Sutton said. “He’s just constantly motivated. I think he appreciates the situation he’s in because of where he started.”
For one thing, he has not forgotten the pleasures of good fast food, even though he just agreed to a six-year contract extension that will pay him more than $19 million. This week, the Red Raiders are staying at the luxurious Hilton Anatole, which is just down the interstate access road from a Whataburger.
“I might or might not have walked over there about 3 in the morning,” Beard said, smiling.
Next in line?
He is an elite coach with no pretense, and Keller might fit the same bill someday soon. He still has not made the jump to a major-conference head coaching job like Beard did, but he led Tyler Junior College in the late 1990s and then spent a combined 17 years as an assistant at Oklahoma State, Kansas and Texas A&M. He’s 50, five years older than Beard, but still has time to make another big leap.
For now he’s intent on making sure his Lumberjacks – who feature old friend Cox as an assistant coach and play a relentless style of full-court defense capable of wearing just about anybody out — make the most of a chance he is sure they deserve.
“Trust me,” Keller said. “It’s no shock that we’re here.”
He meant that in the context of this season, of course. But if he could go back 22 years to the north side of San Antonio, and share a cold, cheap beverage with an old buddy?
Even if those kids did not see it coming, maybe they were dreaming of this all along.