KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Texas Tech basketball coach Mark Adams, who was suspended just lately for racially insensitive feedback made towards one in all his gamers, resigned shortly after the Crimson Raiders had been eradicated from the Massive 12 Event on Wednesday.
Second-year assistant Corey Williams led the Crimson Raiders in their 78-62 loss to West Virginia.
The incident involving Adams occurred in a gathering with a participant, who wasn’t recognized, Texas Tech mentioned Sunday in saying his suspension. The college mentioned Adams “was encouraging the student-athlete to be extra receptive to teaching and referenced Bible verses about staff, academics, mother and father, and slaves serving their masters.”
Athletic director Kirby Hocutt discovered of the incident final Friday and issued a written reprimand, and Adams coached the Crimson Raiders in a regular-season-ending loss to Oklahoma State. However after Hocutt investigated the scenario additional, he determined to droop Adams three days earlier than the beginning of the Massive 12 Event.
Adams waited till his workforce was eradicated earlier than saying that he‘s stepping down.
“My lifelong purpose was to assist and be a optimistic affect on my gamers, and to be part of the Texas Tech males’s basketball workforce,” Adams mentioned in a press release. “Nonetheless, each the college and I imagine this incident has develop into a distraction for the Texas Tech males’s basketball workforce and the college, which I care about so deeply.”
This isn’t the primary time high-profile coaches have been in hassle for insensitive feedback.
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Three years in the past, Pat Chambers resigned at Penn State after one in all his former gamers revealed the coach mentioned he wished to “loosen the noose that’s round your neck” when speaking to the participant about serving to him scale back stress. Chambers was employed at Florida Gulf Coast this season.
And throughout the 2020-21 season, Creighton coach Greg McDermott apologized for telling his workforce after a loss to “keep on the plantation” as a manner of reminding them to stay collectively. He was suspended for one sport.
The 66-year-old Adams graduated from Texas Tech in 1979 and had been on the employees there since 2016, starting as director of basketball operations beneath Tubby Smith after which spending time on Chris Beard’s employees. He was elevated to go coach when Beard departed for Texas and signed a five-year, $15.5 million contract extension final spring.
The extension got here after Adams led the Crimson Raiders to the Massive 12 Event ultimate, the place they misplaced to eventual nationwide champion Kansas, and to the Candy 16 of the NCAA Event in his first seaosn in cost.
Issues soured rapidly this season, although. Texas Tech misplaced its first eight convention video games, and any hope of constructing a run to the Massive 12 Event title and a return to the NCAA Event ended with a dismal effort in opposition to the Mountaineers.
“If I’m being sincere, it’s loads of weight on these children proper now. They’ve been by means of so much within the final week or so,” Williams mentioned afterward. “And in some methods, I simply really feel prefer it caught up with them.
“They gave their greatest. And as soon as the ball stopped falling in, it bought slightly bit more durable. The hill turned so much steeper, and sadly we weren’t capable of make up the distinction.”
