If you met Dan Spencer and his family you loved them.

Spencer was a great head coach to work with from a community outreach aspect. His wife, Susie, frequently baked cookies for the pressbox and club suites. The Spencers are big local proponents of autism awareness. Spencer pushed for Tech's now-top tier baseball facility. The list goes on and on.

No one dislikes Spencer and that made athletic director Kirby Hocutt's Sunday task of firing Spencer and then hosting a Monday morning press conference at the football training facility meeting room difficult.

But in pushing all the positives Spencer brings to the table aside for an all-trumping 29-26 record overall and a 7-17 record in league play Red Raider fans now know firsthand how the first-full year athletic director operates from a coaching retention standpoint.

Hocutt's message Monday was clear. Show improvement every year and then maintain your team at a high level or else.

"We're all evaluated each and every day and at the end of every season," Hocutt said at the podium. "When you look at the last three seasons, we're not going in the right direction. In the last three seasons we've had a fifth place finish (in the Big 12 Conference), a seventh place finish and a ninth place finish. Very simply, we're in a business where you're held accountable for your results and those are not the results that we have at Texas Tech.

"Those are not the results we expect at Texas Tech."

Monday was a major test for Hocutt. The athletic director has fired coaches before, but not at Tech. Not where his new constituency could feel the direct impact and understand what he wants by example.

Hocutt's most high-profile firing decision came in 2010 when the then-Miami athletic director fired Hurricane head coach Randy Shannon after a 7-5 regular season.

Tech's athletic director was composed and there was a certain fire about him. He wasn't angry with anyone but he was direct. The message was clear.

"You go through a season and you win one conference series all year and you know there's more talent in that clubhouse than those results," Hocutt said. "Was it a series or one point over the course of the year? No. It was the full body of work over the last few years.

"The expectation that we have to win and to win in everything we do and to win the right way, we've got to have better results."

Hocutt said he hesitates to put ultimatums on his coaches to make it to a certain level of competition before the season ends because there are a lot of chance occurrences that can derail a season. That wasn't the case here.

"There are a lot of things that are out of your control when it comes to the course of a season," Hocutt said. "There are going to be injuries that are unexpected, bad hops, bad breaks that you have no control over. But at the end of the day we've got to see continuous improvement and we've got to have a program that inspires hope and confidence in the future of that particular program."

The athletic director was asked pointblank how the baseball team's issues were different to that of the football and women's basketball teams and the decisions to retain Tommy Tuberville and Kristy Curry while firing Spencer.

"I don't want to compare one program against another," he said. "Each program is assessed and reviewed at the end of their season and this was the right decision to make related to Texas Tech baseball."

Associate head baseball coach Tim Tadlock has accepted the head coaching position on an interim basis while a nationwide search commences immediately.

Hocutt said Tadlock will be looked at as a serious candidate for the head coaching job full time.

"Tim Tadlock is a tremendous baseball coach," he said. "I don't know if there's anyone in the State of Texas that has the recruiting connections he has. I don't know if there's anyone more respected by Major League scouts than Tim Tadlock. And in the junior college ranks. We're going to take this search and this process step-by-step and Tim's expressed interest in becoming the manager here. We'll visit with him at the right time about that and he'll be a strong candidate."

However, Tadlock is not guaranteed anything.

"We're going to be diligent and take as much time as we need," Hocutt said. "The draft is the first part of June. That being said, this is a much more important decision than an early June deadline. We're going to be diligent, we're going to take our time and find the right best individual in this country to lead our program going forward."

In fairness, Hocutt said Spencer will be paid for the final three years remaining on his contract.

"Dan Spencer is a good man," he said. "Everybody likes Dan."