Texas Tech and Kirby Hocutt (and probably countless other people who contribute to this program monetarily that I don’t have a clue who they are) again demonstrate a commitment to men’s basketball and Chris Beard as A-J Media’s Don Williams reports that the salary pool for the three assistants has increased from $820,000 to $1.1 million, those three assistants being Mark Adams, Brian Burg and Glynn Cyprien.

Tech on Monday announced a new six-year contract for Beard totaling nearly $27.5 million. Giovannetti said increasing the assistants’ pay was a part of those negotiations, which involved Tech athletics director Kirby Hocutt, deputy athletics director Tony Hernandez, university President Lawrence Schovanec, Beard and Beard’s representatives.

“It was part of the deal,” Giovannetti said. “There’s some things that are not in the (Beard) contract, but they just agreed with him to some different things. Just said, ‘We’ll do these things for you,’ and one of them was, ‘We’ll increase your (assistants’ pay).′ ”

The other item that is discussed that leads me to another item, which is that strength and conditioning coach John Reilly’s salary goes from $100,000 to $160,000, which is terrific for him as he’s one of the best in the business. the other idea here is that I’m sure that the support staff maybe also received increase in salaries. Director of Player Development Max Lefevre, Advisor to Coach Beard (that’s an official title) Season Sutton, and Chief of Staff Tim MacAllister could have also received increases of salary. I think part of the deal with Beard agreeing to be the head coach at Texas Tech has been that he wants a large support staff, one that he and the university agree to be compensated.

I love the fact that Sutton is a part of this staff and consider him to be as invaluable to any of the other assistants. He’s like having a 4th assistant coach and Lefevre European connections seem to be a significant part of the recruiting success of this program.