New men’s basketball head coach Mark Adams joined College Hoops Today with Jon Rothstein and there were a few takeaways. As an aside, I’m happy to see a Adams interviewed by a national hoops guy. That hasn’t happened yet, so I’m thankful.

• Adams said that Chris Beard loves Texas Tech, but that the Texas job was the one job that Adams thought would maybe be attractive to Beard.
• During the time after Beard left and before he was hired, the fear of the unknown especially a change in leadership was the biggest issue, he tried to stay calm and be positive and just talked to the current players.
• Adams has been with this program and knows about the culture and process and brings stability and doesn’t want to maintain, but do better. It is a great challenge.
• The biggest difference as an assistant coach and head coach, is a big believer in culture and discipline and toughness and routines and building good habits. Will see man-to-man defense and more aggressive on offense. Hopefully the defense will continue to get better and will be the trademark moving forward.
• Regarding putting together rosters quickly, the transfer portal, not sure if anyone has it figured out, but every year there were a lot of transfers from back in the JUCO days and have a great history of taking transfers and putting players in positions to succeed. Think most guys will come back for the most part.
• Are excited to have Kyler, Mac, and Marcus back, but no one has told us that they aren’t coming back. Taking a new job you have to re-recruit your own guys and, Clarence Nadolny and Buzo Agbo said that they would return.
• Visited with Mac McClung, is considering a return and will meet with his parents soon, would love to have them return, but wants what’s the best for these guys, want them that they’ll be supported either way, but if they feel like they need to go to another school, he’ll support him how he can.
• On the staff, said that it is wide open and wants the best staff he can, Sean Sutton will be back and are going through discussions with Sean now regarding the position he will return.

I’m appreciative to get this bit of information and Adams continues to state that he wants to have a bit of a faster offense and with the hiring of Barret Peery, who is said to have a more up-tempo offense and a pressure defense. It’s also encouraging that the players are returning, or at the very least a pretty good core of players are returning thus far. If the offense is more up-tempo, the roster will need to be deeper because guys will probably be more winded.

And in this interview around the 8 minute mark, Adams says that he’d rather have a great offense than a great defense and teams that can score easier win easier. Interesting because Beard wanted to grind out every possession.

I also think it says something about these players staying with Adams and not going to Texas with Beard. Of course, this presumes that Beard wanted these players in some form or fashion and there’s a better than zero chance that he didn’t want them. Maybe the statement should be that we shouldn’t be surprised at the players returning.

We haven’t had any additional news in terms of new coaches that are on the radar, but when we get that information, we’ll post it here.