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    Texas Longhorns Fire Basketball Coach After Domestic Assault Charge

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    Chris Beard, who was named head coach of the University of Texas men’s team in April 2021, was arrested in December and charged with a third-degree felony.Chris Beard was fired on Thursday as the head coach of the University of Texas men’s basketball team, weeks after he was arrested on a felony domestic violence charge in Austin.Chris Del Conte, the university’s vice president and athletic director, said in a statement on Thursday that the university had decided to terminate Beard’s contract effective immediately.Beard, 49, was suspended without pay on Dec. 12 after he was arrested and charged with assault on a member of a family or household by impeding breath circulation, a third-degree felony, according to the Travis County Sheriff’s Office. Beard posted a cash bond of $10,000 and was released from jail the day of his arrest.Rodney Terry, the team’s associate head coach, has been serving as acting head coach of the Texas Longhorns men’s basketball team since Beard was suspended. Del Conte said that Terry would finish the season as the team’s acting head coach.“This has been a difficult situation that we’ve been diligently working through,” Del Conte said.The Austin Police Department said officers responded to a call about a disturbance at a home in Austin at around 12:15 a.m. on Dec. 12. The caller told the police that the disturbance had ended and that one person at the home had left, the police said in a statement. When the police arrived at the house, a woman told them that Beard had assaulted and choked her.Perry Minton, a lawyer for Beard, said in a statement on Thursday that Beard was “crushed at the news he will not be coaching at the University of Texas.”“At the outset of Coach Beard’s suspension, the university promised they would conduct an independent investigation surrounding the allegations and make a decision regarding his employment only after they had done so,” Minton said. “They proceeded to terminate Coach Beard without asking a single question of him or his fiancée.”The university declined to comment on its investigation.A few days after Beard was arrested, Randi Trew, Beard’s fiancée, said in a statement that her lawyer shared with The Associated Press that the two had engaged in a “physical struggle” after she broke his glasses in “frustration.” Beard, she added, “did not strangle me.”“Chris has stated that he was acting in self-defense, and I do not refute that,” she said. “I do not believe Chris was trying to intentionally harm me in any way. It was never my intent to have him arrested or prosecuted.” A university spokesman confirmed that Beard had been offered the opportunity to resign or have his contracted terminated by the university. Minton, Beard’s lawyer, told James Davis, the university’s vice president of legal affairs, in a letter on Thursday that the offer “came as a shock.”“With this, I want to be on record as emphatically stating, and herein memorializing, that Coach Beard has not done anything to violate any provision of his contract with the University of Texas,” Minton said in the letter. “He was arrested, then his fiancée retracted her previously reported statement.”The Texas Longhorns named Beard head coach in April 2021 after he spent five seasons as the head coach of the men’s basketball team at Texas Tech University, which he led to the N.C.A.A. national championship game in 2019.Before coaching the Longhorns, Beard was the head coach of the men’s basketball teams at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock; Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas; McMurry University in Abilene, Texas; Seminole State College in Seminole, Okla.; and Fort Scott Community College in Fort Scott, Kan. Beard graduated from the University of Texas in 1995 with a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology, the study of human motion. More

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      Tiffany Jackson, Texas Star Forward and W.N.B.A. Veteran, Dies at 37

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      She was an All-American in college and spent nine years as a pro. “I don’t think I’ve seen a player as competitive,” her college coach said.Tiffany Jackson, an All-American forward for the University of Texas women’s basketball team who went on to play nine seasons in the W.N.B.A., died on Monday in Dallas. She was 37.The cause was cancer, the university said.Jackson noticed a lump in one of her breasts in 2015 while she was playing overseas in Israel during the W.N.B.A. off-season. She put off being tested until she returned to the United States and, even then, not until after the start of the season for the W.N.B.A.’s Tulsa Shock.“I didn’t let my teammates know until the playoffs,” she told ESPN in 2016, “because I knew I was going to have to go back to Dallas, after Game 2, win or lose, to start treatment. I ended up telling everybody via mass text, because I was afraid if I did it in person, I would just break down.”Jackson was a powerhouse player at the University of Texas, where she was the only women’s basketball player in the school’s history to score at least 1,000 points, grab 1,000 rebounds and have 300 steals and 150 blocks. She is ranked fifth overall in points with 1,197.“What made her stand out was her versatility,” Jody Conradt, who coached the Texas women’s team from 1976 to 2007, said in an interview. “She was 6-3, very mobile and could play multiple positions. But that was secondary to her competitiveness — I don’t think I’ve seen a player as competitive as Tiffany.”In her four years at Texas, Jackson averaged 15.6 points and 8.4 rebounds a game. As a freshman she helped lead the team to the Sweet 16 round of the N.C.A.A. women’s basketball tournament in the 2003-4 season.Her 2004-5 season was her strongest: She averaged 18.3 points and 8.7 rebounds a game.Tiffany Jackson was born on April 26, 1985, in Longview, Texas. Her mother, Cassie Brooks, had played basketball for the University of New Mexico; her father, Marques Jackson, had been a tight end at the University of Tulsa.At Duncanville High School, near Dallas, Tiffany led the Pantherettes to a state title in 2003, scoring a team-high 16 points in the championship game, shortly after being named a McDonald’s All-American.Jackson was recruited vigorously by more than 60 colleges. One coach said that the school that signed her would become an instant championship contender.“That’s a big statement to make, and I feel good that people think that much of me,” Jackson told The Austin American-Statesman in 2003. “It makes me want to work harder to prove them right.”While the Longhorns never won a national title, Jackson’s star was undiminished. Drafted by the New York Liberty with the fifth overall pick in the 2007 W.N.B.A. draft, she played with the team until she was traded to the Tulsa Shock (now the Dallas Wings) in 2010. She played a final season with the Los Angeles Sparks in 2017.She averaged 6.2 points and 4.5 rebounds a game over her career. She was at her best in 2011, with career highs of 12.4 points and 8.4 rebounds a game.Jackson took off the 2012 season to give birth to her son, Marley. She sat out the 2016 season for breast cancer treatment, which included radiation and a mastectomy.“After that first month, never in my mind did I think I wasn’t going to play again,” she told USA Today in 2017. “So throughout my entire treatment, I was always working out. It was something that kept me going.”Information about her survivors was not immediately available.After retiring as a player in 2018, Jackson became an assistant coach for two seasons at the University of Texas. This year, she was named head coach of the women’s basketball team at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas. She died before she could coach a game for the team. More