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Brian Gregory to Georgia Tech?

greekdeac2011 said:
I thought we loved this guy last year?
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Gregory was definitely among the more-discussed mid-major candidates, along with Brownell, Groce, and Marshall. However, there was a lot of discussion about Gregory's shortcomings and I would say it is a big stretch to say that the board "loved" him.

As I've mentioned before, aside from Brad Stevens there was no consensus candidate last year, and I think GT has discovered that the same is true this year. Once you get past Stevens, Shaka Smart, and perhaps Chris Mooney, there don't seem to be many up-and-coming mid-major coaches that the big schools are targeting. Certainly not enough to fill all the major jobs that are or were recently available (GT, NCSU, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee).
 
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Say Hey Deac said:
Gregory was definitely among the more-discussed mid-major candidates, along with Brownell, Groce, and Marshall. However, there was a lot of discussion about Gregory's shortcomings and I would say it is a big stretch to say that the board "loved" him.

As I've mentioned before, aside from Brad Stevens there was no consensus candidate last year, and I think GT has discovered that the same is true this year. Once you get past Stevens, Shaka Smart, and perhaps Chris Mooney, there don't seem to be many up-and-coming mid-major coaches that the big schools are targeting. Certainly not enough to fill all the major jobs that are or were recently available (GT, NCSU, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee).
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Good post. After the "big 3" of Mooney, Smart, ans Stevens, there really isn't much out there.
 
At least a change really NEEDED to be made with Hewitt... as opposed to ditching a coach who was doing alright for a crap one
 
Now that I think about it, I find it funny that GT fans might wish their AD had done the same thing that many Wake fans (including myself) had wished Wellman had done. That is, Tech is moving into a renovated arena the year after next. Tech is expected to field a poor team this coming year. There were not great mid-major candidates available who weren't either prohibitively expensive or simply unavailable to begin with. Why not wait a year, let Hewitt stink it up in a year where the Jackets have to play in a transitioning" arena" under construction, and then refresh and reload with a new arena and new coach the following year?

Of course, this is easy to say now that Mooney and Smart are unavailable; Tech's AD may not have known that when he fired Hewitt. On the other hand, I still think a guy like Marshall would be absolutely perfect in the ACC; if cost was the issue there, surely Tech's AD must have known about that before he went ahead and fired Hewitt, right?
 
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ChrisL68 said:
Gregory has won the NIT. He made the finals of the A-10 tournament this year. He has won an NCAA game.

His resume is more impressive than [Redacted]'s.
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This. And Colorado was 15-16 overall and 6-10 in the Big 12 (8th place) in Bz's last year. That to me doesn't qualify as competitive. Now Colorado made a nice step forward this year, but there is no way to prove that would or would not have happened if Bz had stayed. You can make an argument either way and there's definitely a portion of Colorado fans that would argue that it was because Bz left. I do find it interesting that the Colorado AD looked outside the program fro Bz's replacement.

I'd take Gregory over [Redacted] in a heartbeat, but it is definitely an uninspiring hire. And it seems like a big majority of the GT folks are disappointed at best and pissed at worst with this hire. What is interesting is there are some GT folks that think there AD is leaving for the same job and Miami and that once Mooney was out of the picture the AD just wanted to wrap things up and offered the guy he liked best that he felt certain would take the job...
 
rawarr said:
At least a change really NEEDED to be made with Hewitt... as opposed to ditching a coach who was doing alright for a crap one
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If we were within 2 ACC wins of this season's record with Dino at the helm would he still have been "doing alright?"
 
Or perhaps GT should have fired/let Hewitt go elsewhere after last season, as Wake did with Gaudio, for the reasons enumerated by Kid. The argument definitely could be made they had more to gain/more cause for firing Hewitt last year than we had with Dino
 
DCDeac said:
If we were within 2 ACC wins of this season's record with Dino at the helm would he still have been "doing alright?"
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No, but I think many of us think we should've waited to fire Dino this year if he had gone 10-22 or something horrible.
 
As a candidate, it's hard to argue that [Redacted] is better than Gregory. Yes, if you look solely at their records they are pretty comparable, with [Redacted] maybe even getting a slight nod, but there's more to it than that.

This was an interesting hire, but it looks like GT didn't have too many better choices. As noted, most hot mid major coaches are red hot right now (Mooney, Smart, Stevens, and Mack) and therefore out of reach of schools that have to pay buyouts. If the dynamic does not change drastically, we might be better suited to going the assistant route next time around.

It is going to be real interesting to see what happens with NCSU and Missouri.
 
Andy Katz's take (thanks to ChillDeac for linking to this Katz blog post in another thread):

• It was really weak that Georgia Tech assistant athletic director Wayne Hogan went out of his way to deny reports that the Yellow Jackets were hiring Brian Gregory. Clearly this was in the works, and Georgia Tech looks small in the way it handled things over the weekend.

• Hiring Gregory is a questionable move. So let's get this straight: The Yellow Jackets pay $7 million to buy out Hewitt and then hire Gregory, whose Flyers finished 7-9 in the A-10 (eighth place) and 22-14 overall. Gregory did win the NIT championship in 2010 with a victory over North Carolina, but he reached the NCAA tournament only twice in eight years. Hewitt made the NCAAs last season, and won a first-round matchup with Oklahoma State. Hewitt also made four other NCAA appearances, and reached the national championship game in 2004. Should he have been let go? You can make that argument. But to fire him, pay him money and get a coach who hadn't done nearly as much as Hewitt at a lower-level conference? How does this make sense?

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-bas...dy/id/6265959/vcu-focused-keeping-shaka-smart
 
Hewitt was a massive underachiever based on the talent the put on the floor and he had totally lost the fan base at Tech. Gregory may or may not have been the right hire, but GT had to do something as apathy was setting in with the fan base...
 
It makes sense for Tech to move on solely due to the nature of Hewitt's rolling contract. Tech gambled that he would be their K, Dean, or Gary, and they lost.
 
Deacon2002 said:
Hewitt was a massive underachiever based on the talent the put on the floor and he had totally lost the fan base at Tech. Gregory may or may not have been the right hire, but GT had to do something as apathy was setting in with the fan base...
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This.
 
KidA23 said:
• Hiring Gregory is a questionable move. So let's get this straight: The Yellow Jackets pay $7 million to buy out Hewitt and then hire Gregory, whose Flyers finished 7-9 in the A-10 (eighth place) and 22-14 overall. Gregory did win the NIT championship in 2010 with a victory over North Carolina, but he reached the NCAA tournament only twice in eight years. Hewitt made the NCAAs last season, and won a first-round matchup with Oklahoma State. Hewitt also made four other NCAA appearances, and reached the national championship game in 2004. Should he have been let go? You can make that argument. But to fire him, pay him money and get a coach who hadn't done nearly as much as Hewitt at a lower-level conference? How does this make sense?
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Why does this sound familiar....
 
Seen on the Dayton campus this morning ... (the 2018 sign was a countdown to the end of Gregory's contract)

awesome.jpg
 
KidA23 said:
Andy Katz's take (thanks to ChillDeac for linking to this Katz blog post in another thread):

• Hewitt made the NCAAs last season, and won a first-round matchup with Oklahoma State. Hewitt also made four other NCAA appearances, and reached the national championship game in 2004. Should he have been let go? You can make that argument. But to fire him, pay him money and get a coach who hadn't done nearly as much as Hewitt at a lower-level conference? How does this make sense?

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-bas...dy/id/6265959/vcu-focused-keeping-shaka-smart
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With all due respect to Andy Katz, it seems pretty rare that a coach gets fired and the media community expresses their full support of the firing.

Honestly, I think it's partially due to the fact that columnists like Andy Katz are not close enough to the situation. They have to cover 100+ teams and they simply can't be engaged enough to fully understand the dynamics of each school's situation. They seem to look at the overall record and how the team did in the postseason and that's about it -- no effort to explore the subtext.

Firing Dino made sense if you REALLY watched Wake Forest play basketball during his 3 years, yet plenty of media folks acted with complete surprise. They pointed to the 61-31 or whatever and that was the entire basis for their opinion. Similarly, firing Hewitt makes sense if you have REALLY followed GT, yet you have Katz arguing that it is crazy.

Again, I don't necessarily blame these media guys, but they're awfully predictable when it comes to this stuff.
 
vadimivich said:
Seen on the Dayton campus this morning ... (the 2018 sign was a countdown to the end of Gregory's contract)

awesome.jpg
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Disturbing and delusional sense of entitlement on this one. See what runs like George Mason, Butler, and VCU do to the other mid-majors. I grew up a loyal Flyer fan - let's look at their history. Gregory was the best thing that happened to them in the last 20 years

Dayton's program has never been the same since they ran Don Donoher out. Alum and head coach for 25 years (1964-1989). Gregory has been the best of the lot though.

Donoher's 25 years
9 NCAA appearances (and it was much harder to get into the tournament during his tenure)
6 NIT appearances
1 Title Game 1967 - lost to UCLA
1 Elite 8 1984 - lost to Georgetown
1 NIT Championship 1968
Career record 437-275
W/L% - 61.38

Since the 1988-89 season - 5 NCAA appearances in 22 years, never making it past the 2nd round
5 years Jim O'Brien 61-87, 1 NCAA (2nd round) W/L% 41.2
9 years Oliver Purnell 155-116, 2 NCAA, 3 NIT W/L% 57.2
8 years Brian Gregory 172-94, 2 NCAA (1 2nd round), 3 NIT (Champions 2010) W/L% 69.92
 
Bobknightfan : Wake Forest :: Azdeac : Dayton?
 
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