Arkansas-Little Rock head coach broke hand by punching whiteboard
Arkansas-Little Rock secured a spot in the NCAA tournament with a comeback win over Louisiana-Monroe over the weekend, but it came at a cost.
Frustrated with his team's malaise following the first half of the Sun Belt tournament title game, Arkansas-Little Rock head coach Chris Beard punched a whiteboard while delivering instructions at halftime.
Beard consequently suffered a broken hand and sported a cast when he took the podium on Wednesday.
"We were not playing our best half," said Beard said, according to ESPN's Myron Medcalf. "We were down five at half. I made a bad decision in the locker room, trying to get the guys a little fired up. We talk a lot about boxing in our program. We're a good defensive team. We believe in boxing, kind of, footwork.
"Unfortunately, I didn't get the message with the handwork. A dry-erase board took a bad shot."
It's good that Beard used a whiteboard to vent, because the alternative might have been a chair. And had Beard not heeded the words of his former head coach Bob Knight (Beard was an assistant at Texas Tech), he might have joined the famously tempestuous Knight on lowlight reels for decades to come.
"There was a chair there," Beard said. "I thought, briefly, about maybe using the chair, but Coach Knight told me never to do that. Never use a chair in (any) situation. No, I learned a lot from Coach. I'm proud to be associated with him and proud to be taking a team to the NCAA tournament that I believe plays the right way."
Beard's Trojans are slated to place fifth-seeded Purdue on Thursday.