Ranking the Big 12 Basketball Coaches (Part 1)

An already loaded group of head coaches in the Big 12 improved this off-season when jobs opened up at Texas Tech, TCU, and of course, Oklahoma State.

Chris Beard and Brad Underwood are joining a Power 5 conference for the first time as head coaches, and Jamie Dixon comes over from Pittsburgh after an incredibly successful run for over a decade.

The Big 12 conference can match up head to head with any other conference in terms of quality depth of head coaches. There are established veterans, exciting young coaches, and newcomers that have won big at smaller schools and are ready to make a splash.

Let’s rank the bottom three in part one of this series.

10. Chris Beard  (Texas Tech)

Chris Beard comes over this offseason after just one season at Arkansas-Little Rock. But what a season it was. The Trojans went 30-5 and swept the Sun Belt regular season and conference tournament titles en route to the tournament. Then Arkansas Little-Rock took down 5-seed Purdue in an 85-83 double OT thriller before bowing out to Iowa State.

Beard jumped to UNLV on March 27, only to accept the Texas Tech job on April 15 in a strange turn of events. Beard spent 10 years under Bob Knight and his son Pat as an assistant in Lubbock, and looks to continue the recent momentum that Tubby Smith leaves behind.

Beard holds a career 96-30 record at McMurry, Angelo State, and Arkansas Little-Rock.

9. Bruce Weber (Kansas State)

Bruce Weber is an established veteran coach, putting up a 65.2 winning percentage in stops at Southern Illinois, Illinois and Kansas State. Weber has won at least a share of the conference title at each school he has been at, including 10 NCAA tournaments total and a Final Four at Illinois in 2005 (with Bill Self’s players).

But Weber has gone 79-54 at Kansas State and is under the gun in Manhattan after missing the Big Dance in two consecutive seasons, including a 5-13 in the Big 12 last season.

Weber may only have one more season at the helm for the Wildcats, who may regret not moving on their own alumni, Brad Underwood, sooner.

8. Steve Prohm (Iowa State)

Prohm faced the unenviable task of following up The Mayor in Ames, after Freddy Hoiberg jumped ship to the Chicago Bulls. Prohm was absolutely out of hand at Murray State in four seasons, going 104-29 (.782).

Prohm took over a pre-season top 10 team last year and underperformed by all accounts, going 23-12 and finishing fifth in the Big 12.

Prohm will need to rebuild with PG Monte Morris after losing a couple of key seniors, and we will really get to see how good Prohm is at this level in the next couple years with his own players.