During most nights and weekends, you might see a fiery Chris Beard posing on the sideline as a basketball coach. But at his very core, he’s also, a salesman.
“Coach Beard has a presence to him,” Tech senior guard Thomas Brandsma said. “It’s contagious.”
And it’s a phrase that Beard uses that he took from his mentor Bob Knight that has sold his players on his vision for this team.
“4 to 1 is everything that’s how I live my life,” Brandsma said.
“It means being more mentally tough than physically tough,” Tech junior guard Keenan Evans said.
“The mental is to the physical, as four is to one,” Texas Tech head coach Chris Beard said. “The first time I heard that from coach I really believed it.”
It’s that same psychological edge that he hopes his team takes flight with, that has NBA players galore.
“In the Big 12, everyone has physical talent to compete, but it’s the teams that have the mental toughness to do it, in a 31 game schedule that will give yourself a chance.” Beard said.
“He’s going to say, it’s going to be tough,” former Texas Tech head coach Bob Knight said. “We’re going to work to be the best team we can be.”
However, 4 to 1 is not just a microcosm of coach Knight’s teaching. Every road game this team takes a 2×4 with them. It’s something Beard said he learned from one of his favorite coaches, Nick Saban.
What that piece of wood represents is being able to play with distractions. To be mentally tougher than your surroundings. Beard explained that if you were to put a piece of wood on the ground and ask some to walk across it, it would be a simple task.
However, if you were to place that piece of wood in the rafters and ask someone to complete the same task, not many people would be likely to do it, even though nothing has changed but the environment.
“I think about it with road games. It’s the same game, it’s just the crowd, atmosphere. You have to eliminate that,” Beard said.
“On the road games we try to take that with us. We try to tune everybody out and just battle through anything,” Evans said.
But on the road in Big 12 play is where the Red Raiders sit winless so far this season, and with 6 more opportunities down the stretch, surely chances that Tech will need to cash in on to make it to the NCAA tournament.
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