Tech does support basketball better than us and does probably have a better NIL situation, but they've also had some luck and just nailed it on the hiring of Beard and McCasland, but both were obvious choices at the time.
Timing is probably the most underrated aspect of coaching searches by internet fans. You'll see posts all the time that are like "we could have had X" coach, but it's usually not true. When you have an opening has to line up to when a coach is available.
For example, we'd have loved to hire Buzz from Marquette, but at the time when we had an opening his buyout was a prohibitive problem, so we couldn't do it.
Tech has made their missteps too. The Mark Adams hire was very similar to our Earley hire. Just hoping an assistant had the juice to replace the guy you lost to your rival. Didn't work and they canned him, at which point McCasland was available.
In 2021, when Tech first had an opening, McCasland was finishing his fourth season at North Texas, they won Conference USA in the year the NCAA Tournament was cancelled but they still would have needed to win the CUSA tournament to get in the field in 2020, and then the next year they finished third in the western division of Conference USA but won the CUSA tournament and got into the field in 2021.
So would McCasland have even been a candidate in 2021? Two years later they have two more 25+ win seasons with 16+ conference wins and won the NIT (they didn't make the NCAAT field because they lost in the conference tournament both times) and he's an obvious candidate in 2023.
