Texas Tech got its man, and like most coaching searches, that carries a wave of immediate euphoria with it.

Maybe more so in this case, because newly anointed Red Raiders’ coach Joey McGuire certainly seems to have a pretty healthy groundswell of support if social media measurements count for anything.

Whether McGuire winds up being the perfect fit will take some time to take root and grow under the West Texas sun and wind. But there are sure a lot of indications that this is the right fit in the here-and-now.

There will plenty of speculation about who Kirby Hocutt and Co. targeted first, who was spoken to, who the Texas Tech committee swung and missed with … and none of that matters.

What does matter is that from all indications – pretty eager to hear McGuire’s take on this – the committee deserves a ton of credit for connecting the dots the Red Raiders needed at this critical point of program’s evolution.

Because with no blame aimed in any direction (because there is plenty to slice and dice in a lot of directions where some folks may not want to acknowledge it) this is a football program that is stagnating.

Put bluntly, the last three hires have not come anywhere close to the bull’s-eye. To be clear, coaching hires don’t have to be perfect because people can grow into their jobs – same as anybody in the real world.

But the three hires since the ill-fated and sloppy end of Mike Leach’s tenure, just feel hollow, and the Red Raiders win-loss results bear that out.

Tommy Tuberville: A proven excellent coach in the best conference in the country, but a horrible fit at Texas Tech.

Kliff Kingsbury: Credentials made him a very good fit except for an aversion to one of the most important job duties required of a college coach.

Matt Wells: Salt-of-the-earth person with solid football acumen but somebody who just didn’t work out on many levels.

To mix up sports analogies, you get three strikes before bad things happen. The day Wells’ firing was announced, Texas Tech’s football program was the equivalent of a batter trudging back to the dugout in a dazed-and-confused state.

This is the next at-bat.

To be fair, there are some similarities to the Kingsbury and Wells decisions. McGuire has never been a head coach at the college level, although his long, wildly successful tenure at Cedar Hill sure give him some experience running a large operation. Like Wells, there is a bit of a feel of grabbing the hot name before somebody else can.

But the dissimilarities and how the committee went about things outweigh those things.

There was every opportunity to jump at the shiny names and try to go elbow-to-elbow with USC, LSU, Miami and whoever else in mosh pit of schools looking for a new coach. In Tech’s case, there was also the risky options -- no need to dredge the names up here on McGuire’s big day -- which none of those other schools were likely to do.

Would’ve made for a nice splash, sure. But also may have been another step in sinking the program.

Instead of going back to the coaching tree of the perceived glory days under Mike Leach, Hocutt and Co. opted more for old-school/out-of-the box and conjured up the Spike Dykes hiring in 1986. Not exactly the same because Dykes was on staff and had been the Red Raiders’ defensive coordinator for two seasons -- but there are similarities are impossible to miss.

Effervescent personality with ironclad connections to the Texas high school coaching community? Come on down.

Several comparisons have popped up between McGuire and former Texas and now North Carolina coach again Mack Brown. Put your dislike for the Longhorns aside for a minute and remember what Brown did at UT. Anybody out there not OK with Texas Tech potentially landing its own version of Brown?

And here’s the thing about the whole “who was interviewed/who turned the job down” pecking order thing. What seems apparent right now is that Texas Tech connected with a guy who 1) Truly wants the job; 2) Won’t get his head turned by every “bigger” job that opens up; 3) A man young and energetic enough to tackle a tough task without having to swat away controversy away from the field at every turn.

Texas Tech got its man and that’s cause for relief, excitement and hope. Now it’s time for McGuire to get to town, roll up his sleeves, find the right people to put around him on the coaching staff and prove exactly why this seems to be a popular decision.

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