By Jeff Walker | A-J SPORTS EDITOR

Chris Beard last was a head coach in 2001 at Seminole State College.

With Texas Tech head coach Pat Knight serving a one-game suspension, Beard and assistant coach Stew Robinson will team up to lead the Red Raiders today against No. 25 Texas.

Knight was given the suspension by the Big 12 Conference for his comments questioning the officiating of Saturday’s game against Texas A&M. Beard is the associate head coach and Robinson has scouted the Longhorns, which is why they’ll share the duties of head coach on the Tech bench.

“I’ll be the acting head coach, but I anticipate Stew and I will work closely together because this is his game,” Beard said. “Everything will be the same. Everything has been the same this week. Pat has been to all the practices. He’ll be traveling with us, but he can’t be in the arena as part of his suspension. The only thing that changes is that we’ll now decide when to use time outs and substitutions and who plays, things like that.”

The coaching staff might have been hard pressed to pick a more difficult situation to be without their head coach.

The Longhorns were ranked No. 11 when they came to Lubbock and handed the Red Raiders a 71-49 defeat. Since then, Texas has gone 5-4, which included a three-game losing streak. The Longhorns are tied for fourth in the Big 12 and, many feel, need to finish strong to secure a lock on an NCAA Tournament berth.

Despite the slide, however, the Longhorns are coming off a 73-68 win over then-No. 2 Oklahoma, who played most of the game without star sophomore Blake Griffin after he suffered a concussion.

So, which team does Tech expect to face? The one that beat the Red Raiders by 22, or the one that lost at home to Kansas State and Missouri?

“They’ve been up and down a little bit, but they’re a dangerous team,” Robinson said. “It depends on which Texas team shows up, the one that beat Oklahoma or the one that struggled earlier in a loss at home to Kansas State.”

Short of winning the conference tournament, Tech knows it won’t be playing in a postseason tournament. The Red Raiders are tied for 10th with Iowa State, and they could remain that way until the final game of the regular season when the teams meet in Ames, Iowa.

Despite the record, and the loss of their head coach, the Red Raiders said this week that they haven’t given up.

“Right now, we’ve got three weeks left in the regular season and we’re going to work our tails off to do the best we can,” freshman center Robert Lewandowski said. “We’ve got the hardest stretch of schedule in the Big 12 with Texas now and then Oklahoma and then right after that we’ve got Kansas. So, this is not the time to be down on ourselves. This is the time to work our hardest and see if we can pull off a few upsets.”

Winning in Austin would be an upset. Not only are the Longhorns 131/2-point favorites, but they’ve compiled a 20-3 record against Tech under head coach Rick Barnes. Texas is 10-0 under Barnes against Texas in Austin.

“We know we have to play to our strengths,” Robinson said. “Now is the time when we need to put two good halves together, so we’ll see if we can do that down there and see what happens.”

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