Texas Travel to Oxford to meet No. 23 Ole Miss and former head coach Chris Beard

From a pure basketball perspective when Texas Longhorns plays No. 23 Ole Miss Rebels In Oxford, Sandy and John Black Pavilion on Wednesday, head coach Rodney Terry’s team is trying to continue his recent increase in two even ranked victories while facing a ranked opponent for the seventh time in eight conference games.

Tip is at. 20 Central at ESPN2 with Ole Miss having a 71 percent victory probability and preferred with 6.5 points in fanduel.

The effort is increased for the rebels because Ole Miss has lost three straight matches in conference games, including an overtime loss to Mississippi State and a late blow lead against Texas A&M In Oxford.

Ole Miss boasts the country’s No. 12 defense in adjusted efficiency by turning opponents of 23 percent of their belongings and defending well on the two most important defense levels-the three-point line, with rebels limiting their opponents to 30 percent shooting, 33 .

Offensively, the rebels are outside the top-50 nationally in adjusted efficiency thanks to the matches of having shots blocked ( # 311) and offensive rebounding (No. 291) and average raw shooting percentages. Ole Miss protects the ball well to sixth nationally in turnover speed.

With a balanced scoring attack, six players are an average of 9.5 or more points per Fight, led by Virginia Tech Transfer Guard Sean Pedulla at 14.3 points per Match, also the team’s leader in manufactured three-point curve. Inside is the leading rebounder and the second -leading shot blocker 6’9, 250 pounds forward Malik Dia. Interestingly, it is 6’6 guard Dre Davis who leads the rebels in blocked shots.

Texas hopes that the star-new jersey three Johnson can find a level of consistency after an up-and-down start to SEC games that reached his current highlight in Saturday’s 22-point comeback against Texas A&M, scoring 24 of his Games-High and Career High 30 points in the second half, hitting all 10 of its free throw and adding four assists, two blocks and one stealing.

As a result, Johnson Sec Freshman of the Week Heads served for the second time Monday after being the first Longhorn’s newborner who scored 30 points since Kevin Durant.

However, Wednesday’s competition does not occur in a vacuum – it is also the first matchup between Texas and its former head coach Chris Beard, who was fired by the university 755 days ago after he was arrested for crime of domestic violence in December 2022 and Completed with cause in January 2023, before the charge was dropped by Travis County then in February 2023.

Just 67 days later Beard was hired by Ole Miss, who underwent a “Comprehensive control process“But still made the decision to hire the former Texas head coach.

As per the arrest warranty relationshipBeard’s fiancé, Randi Trew, said that “he just cracked on me and became super violent,” “strangled me, threw me off the bed, bite me, bruises all over the leg, threw me around and went nuts,” and “I couldn’t breathe. ”

The shift, which Trew admitted to starting by breaking Beard’s reading glasses after days of disputes between the two, left pulled with cuts in her face and thumb, a scrape on her legs and a bite mark on her forearm, according to the statement.

Trew later released a statement that refused that beard strangled her and that he acted in self -defense; Her desire for Beard to avoid prosecution was one of the most important factors in the decision by Travis County then to reject the case.

When Beard was fired by the University in January, the Vice President of Legal Affairs at the UT rationale for this termination with a cause in a communication with Beard’s lawyer.

“Chris Beard engaged in unacceptable behavior that makes him unsuitable to serve as head coach at our university,” James Davis wrote.

“It is his actual behavior that we are considering, not whether some actions also constitute a crime. Whether the district lawyer ultimately charges Mr. Beard is not crucial to whether he engaged in behavior that unnecessarily a head coach at our university, ”Davis continued.

“There seems to be a wrong underlying assumption that the result of the criminal process dictates Mr. Beard’s employment result. But these are different processes where different decision makers weigh different factors.

“(A) to win, our evaluation of Mr. Beard’s suitability for service is not conditional on whether he is also convicted of a particular crime or whether these charges are rejected at some point, ”Davis wrote.

“In addition, your letter this morning reveals that Mr. Beard does not understand the meaning of the behavior he knows that he engaged in, or the subsequent events that detract from his ability to effectively lead our program. This lack of self -awareness is yet another failure of the judgment that makes Mr. Beard unsuitable for acting as a head coach at our university. “

During Beard’s initial press conference at Ole Miss, He avoided direct question about his arrest.

“Respectful Randi and I have agreed not to talk about the details of what happened, not only that night, but in the evening we went through during this process,” Beard said. “But what I can tell you is that much of what was reported. “

The accuracy of this statement is highly questionable – Trew’s statement does not necessarily speak to itself, and Beard’s allegations of inaccurate reporting were not justified by DA’s decision not to prosecute the case.

From a legal perspectiveBeard’s statement was carefully designed and avoided due to the potential of Trew to bring a civil case against beard, which requires only an “overweight of evidence” in a criminal case that requires a security of more than 90 percent.

This means that full public responsibility from Beard could demand to expose themselves to legal responsibility.

The context of Beard’s arrest, as illustrated by the statistics and the realities of domestic violence, also raises further serious concerns beyond whether a university should hire him as their main basketball coach.

As for the total accuracy of the statements that Trew made to the police on stage, “Validated investigations show that false reporting in case of domestic violence and rape cases are between 2 percent and 6 percent. “So they are not only the odds of the Trew lying in the immediate demand for the change extremely small, Research suggests that 80 to 90 percent of the survivors of domestic violence regain their original statements.

The rationale behind these decisions on repetition is different, according to Findlaw.com:

Physical proof of suffocation is often not found, making it difficult to document in an arrest’s statement, With a published study showing that marks are only visible in less than half of choking cases. In the statement, Trew claimed that Beard’s arm was across her neck while holding her from behind.

“Serious consequences can only happen in just a few seconds after being suffocated. Prevention of air and blood flow by compressing its throat can cause swelling and closure of the airways or delayed stroke or cardiac arrest, ”Gael Strack, CEO of the Alliance of Hope International, told domestic shelters.org.

But the absence of visible brands does not reduce the danger of suffocation, as experts are considered the highest predictor of murder:

In a study Of murder victims killed by an intimate partner, it was found that 43 percent had experienced a non-fatal suffocation of their partner before their murder. In attempts at the killing of an intimate partner, 45 percent of the victims had been strangled before the murder attempt. Researchers in the study, including the acclaimed expert in domestic violence jacquelyn campbell who developed Hardering In 1987, it decided that being suffocated by a partner, even once increases a victim’s risk of killing this perpetrator over 600 percent.

Leaving a violent relationship only increases the survivor’s risk – The first 18 months are considered the most dangerous.

“When the person being abused tries to leave the relationship, it is a great loss of control for their violent partner,” said Stephanie Klotz, professional training manager at JBWS. “The majority of violent violence in the home and most of all, serious injuries occur in violent conditions when the survivor ends the relationship.”

In addition to failure in the judgment caused by Beard’s lack of self -awareness quoted in his termination of because of Texas, the overall truths of domestic violence emphasize why Beard is unfit to train Longhorns or any other school – he is not just unreliable, He is a physical threat to any domestic partner whom he is in a relationship without public evidence that he has done something to treat anger -handling problems that have manifested themselves in less violent ways on the basketball court.

“It’s not me,” beard said At his initial press conference. “It’s not who I am. It’s not who I’ve been. It’s not who I want to be. “

But even the aspects of the statement that Trew did not do or could not return because of the physical proof of the bite mark and other scrubs on her body belie, this statement of beard – “who you are any of the time is the one you are all Of the time, “Like Texas Head football coach Steve Sarkisian likes to say – just as domestic violence makes statistics that provide significantly more credibility with Trew’s original declarations in the arrest declaration than her statement, which contests police characterization of suffocation.

Trew did not deny beards that bite her or threw her over the bed. At the moment, she was afraid enough for her safety that she called the police and described how “super violent” beard became.

And it gets the decision from Ole Miss to hire a beard so morally disgusting, an ugly stain at the university that appears every time the rebels take the court that just gets a slightly different light Wednesday considering the opponent.