Georgia Tech Basketball: Clipping Brian Gregory is not the Answer Right Now
To axe or not to axe, that is the question. Brian Gregory’s 19- 51 ACC Conference record in four years of coaching does not give you much confidence that things are going to get better.
Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets
Then again, in an age where everyone seeks instant gratification, patience has become more of a virtue than at any other time in human history.
There are plenty of reasons that supporters of Georgia Tech basketball could be patient for one more season with coach Brian Gregory.
Charles Mitchell, Quinton Stephens, Chris Bolden and Marcus Georges-Hunt will be back next season with more experience and a chip on their shoulder that they will use to right a 2015 season full of wrongs.
Tadric Jackson will be more experienced in his sophomore season, and the two-headed monster at point guard of Travis Jorgenson and Josh Heath will have had a full year in Gregory’s system to draw from as they guide the Jackets next season .
Ben Lammers and Abdouleye Gueye will also have another year under the coach that recruited them, and don’t forget Nick Jacobs will be eligible for next season after transferring from Alabama.
AJC.com writer Jeff Schultz points out an important factor when it comes to the decision of whether or not to clip Gregory also. The school is still breaking off loot to canned coach Paul Hewett, why would Georgia Tech want to waste money on a second clipped coach for their payroll?
This might be a situation where Brian Gregory gets to take what he has learned about the ACC landscape and use next year to play with an experienced team of transfers and recruits in his system to get the wins that eluded him in 2014-15 .
Things he may have gotten away with at Dayton with those teams he might be finding out that he can’t get away with in the ACC.
It is not like the team did not play hard for him every game. There were just times it seemed that Brian Gregory’s clipboard seemed inferior compared to his peers.
Say what you want, there was a point in the season where it was getting predictable what Brian Gregory was going to diagram for late game situations.
If fans saw that Marcus Georges-Hunt isolation play one more time, there was going to be riots at McCamish with burning cardboard cutouts of Coach Gregory.
Mar 10, 2015; Greensboro, NC, USA; Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets guard Josh Heath (11) passes the ball to forward Charles Mitchell (0) in the first half of the first round of the ACC Tournament at Greensboro Coliseum. Mandatory Credit: Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports
He made adjustments to that trait as the season progressed and the timeouts became more productive.
You saw the team even shake their perceived reluctance to shoot the pill in half court sets. Coach Gregory said, and I am paraphrasing ‘it was because the ball was not passed in the shooting pocket making good looks more difficult’, though the majority of the time that was not the case, but why argue.
His offense made progress as the season went on, and we even saw the team play with tempo which made for better offensive execution.
Going into next season he will have better understanding of his personnel and his personnel would have better understanding of him.
As much as people feel there is no excuse for this season, there really would not be one next season.
Dare I say there are more pros to Gregory staying than cons?
The one thing that could weigh heavily in Gregory getting clipped is purely about his ability to coach his team through the tight game situations.
If the admin feels that his late game clipboarding is going to improve by this fall, he stays, if not he goes.
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Bottom line, the players know what cost them, the coaches know what cost them, together they can right a lot of wrongs if given the opportunity.
If this same scenario plays out next season you have to axe him.
If this writer has a vote given the circumstances, he stays on for one last season. I still stand by his offense looking more like a high school offense than Paul Johnson’s. I stand by his players looking reluctant to shoot.
I also stand by the improvement that I saw in the team and more importantly his clipboard. If he can figure out how to get his team mentally ready for late game situations he has a double-digit win ACC Conference team in 2015-16.
It is not in the best interest of the school to cut bait with Brian Gregory financially and given the players, it is not in the best interest of them.
That statement might rub people wrong, but if you paid attention you saw the improvement in the team and for what it’s worth his clipboard , it just did not show up in crunch time and in the win column.