Georgia Tech Basketball: Brian Gregory Acknowledges What Fans Already Knew

Ken Sugiura’s piece on ajc.com, which was basically Brian Gregory telling everyone that watched the 12-19 fiasco that was Georgia Tech Men’s Basketball, “it is okay to feel the way you feel” was the epitomy of “well duh”.

Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets /

Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets

On behalf of all the people that sat through all 31 games of Georgia Tech Basketball, endured the false hope of the Yellow Jackets 9-3 start, and held their head over and over again after collapse after collapse after collapse, I would like to thank Brian Gregory for telling us something we already knew.

Brian Gregory acknowledging, according to Sugiura’s piece, “Everybody should be disappointed, and no one should be accepting the fact that, OK, we took a big step in our competitiveness within this league,” goes without saying.

Honestly, there are a lot of fans that are not buying the competiveness of the team.

If fans were to be honest, teams looked like they took it easy on Georgia Tech at times because everyone in the Southeastern United States knows that if you put a zone on the court, Tech is fodder since they can’t shoot.

The opposition was actually bailing the Yellow Jackets out by playing man to man defense. But due to the fact the Jackets could not close out games, the Jackets could not take advantage of the bailout.

Brian Gregory did have a quote that I quite admired in the ajc.com piece:

“I deal in reality, too. We need to improve in some key areas. And that means, as coaches and players, we need to meet in the middle of that. I feel confident in our guys that they’ll do that.”

-Brian Gregory

The use of “we” is good, and the confidence “they’ll do that” is cool and all. But the problem people need to have is that he did not say what he himself as head coach needs to improve on with his team.

Brian Gregory is not in a position to pass off the burden of improvement on “we as coaches and players”.

Fans are seriously at a point where it is like “wait hold up, you are the head coach, the buck stops with you!”.

Brian Gregory is the one calling timeouts and diagraming lame plays that don’t produce when it is crunch time.

When fans can literally tell you on social media “here comes the Marcus Georges-Hunt isolation” and it is on the floor in front of you or on your TV screen, that is not a “we as coaches” situation. That is a you as Brian Gregory situation.

When fans are talking about how the recruiting is not up to par for ACC play, and that the caliber of players recruited needs to improve if the team wants to right a 12-19 wrong, that is a Brian Gregory thing.

With all due respect to Coach Gregory, he was really not in a position to say “we” in the Ken Sugiura piece after keeping his job by the skin of his teeth.

This was a time where fans needed to see personal accountability from Gregory. This was a time where Brian Gregory could have ingratiated himself more with the fans simply by being candid about what he personally needs to do to fix the team.

Sometime you get the feeling that coaches, administration, front office executives, etc., disregard the intelligence of the fans instead of talking candidly about the mistakes they personally felt they made.