Was Ben Lammers 2014-15 Season Symbolic of a Bigger Problem?

I find it interesting when getting into discussions with people about the state of Georgia Tech Basketball that the most frequent complaint made pertaining to coach Brian Gregory is his lack of recruiting prowess and player development.

Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets

Going into the 2014-15 season the main recruits that observers were actually looking to see some playing time out of was guard Tadric Jackson and center Ben Lammers.

Jackson was able to get on the court mainly because he brought some semblance of perimeter offense off the bench and is known as a scorer.

But where was Ben Lammers? Seems to me that the freshman should have been able to get a little more playing time than he actually did.

Now granted, Tech had Demarco Cox and Charles Mitchell ahead of him at the five position. As far as the four position went, Gregory decided to rotate Robert Sampson and Charles Mitchell in that spot more often than not as the season went on.

But why wasn’t Ben Lammers part of the post rotation as a lot of people expected?

He was one of Brian Gregory’s main recruits. Yet he only appeared in 19 games and averaged 1.2 points and 1.5 rebounds.

Given that depth was on of the things that the 2014-15 Yellow Jackets roster did provide, you expected to see Lammers on the court a little bit more than 113 total minutes on the year.

It is just kind of puzzling, but at the same time this might be an example of what fans are disgruntled about when it comes to Brian Gregory’s tenure as head coach.

Here you have a 6-foot-10 center that is not going to get better unless he actually gets to see some playing time on the floor. He is actually one of Gregory’s top recruits going into 2014-15, yet when it comes to him getting any time he is nowhere to be found.

What point is there in having a player that you recruited if you are not going to utilize him?

Was Lammers lack of playing time what fans are talking about when they say that Coach Gregory is not good at developing players?

If it turned out that Lammers was simply not ready or equipped to compete in ACC play, that would actually give legitimacy the recruiting complaints of Georgia Tech fans.

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The bottom line is this, Lammers can be seen as symbolic of the shortcomings of the current coaching staff in one way or the other.

Either Lammers was recruited and overvalued by the staff as far as how effective he could be in ACC play, or he simply was not developed well enough by the coaching staff to even see the floor.

Any way you slice it, how is anyone going to find out what you have in Ben Lammers if he never sees the floor?

This is why Ben Lammers 2014-15 season is not an indictment on Lammers, but could be symbolic of a bigger issue when it comes to the coaches.

As time passes you begin to see that the Georgia Tech hoop fans are pretty astute and actually have legitimate complaints.