A hearty congratulations to Texas Tech men’s basketball coach Chris Beard for being named the Associated Press men’s college coach of the year:

“I’ve always believed you have to be who you are,” Beard said in an interview with the AP. “You can never forget who you are. … Sometimes as you advance in the profession and the logo on your shirt changes or the title next to your name changes, you kind of change. I’ve never wanted to do that.”

Beard earned 20 of 64 votes from the same panel that selects the weekly AP Top 25, with voters submitting ballots before the start of the NCAA Tournament. Beard’s team had won a share of its first Big 12 regular-season title at the time of the voting. In the tournament, Texas Tech pushed past top-seeded Gonzaga to win the West and earn its ticket to Minneapolis.

This is great and all and really speaks to what Beard has done at Texas Tech in such a short time, but at today’s press conference, he’s talking about going to see Sex and the City with Mark Adams, which is awesome and completely unrelated to being the coach of the year, but maybe it’s all related. Doing what you do and being who you are and surrounding yourself with people who “get” you and love basketball:

So we normally go to the movies, and there might be three or four people there. We sit next to each other because we talk basketball. We got there one night, and we were going to go to the 10:35 show at the Cinemark 16. It really didn’t matter what movie it was, but the only movie left was “Sex and the City.” I remember kind of looking at him like, man, I don’t know about this, Coach. He looked around. There’s only three cars in the parking lot. That’s Bill who runs the place, and I think that car’s been there for two weeks. All right, let’s go see “Sex and the City.”

So this was the only time that we didn’t sit right next to each other at the 10:35 movie. So we thought we were good, but then right before the lights went down, about four or five other people walked in the movie theater. Me and Coach, we felt a little insecure. But I’m actually not against “Sex and the City.” I thought it was a great show. Is it HBO? My oldest daughter watched it, Carrie and Big. My oldest daughter goes to Columbia University now, which is in the city, so we see some of the things. So I’m not against “Sex and the City.” I’m just against going to the 10:35 movie with another friend of mine and watching “Sex and the City.”