Up against the wall in early February, Georgia Tech delivered a memorable season-saving rally over the final six weeks of the season. The Yellow Jackets won eight of their final 11 games, reached the NIT quarterfinals and finished the season with 21 wins, more than all but two Tech teams in the past 20 years.
It was how the Jackets pulled off that finish that helped lead to a Friday afternoon meeting between coach Brian Gregory and Athletic Director Mike Bobinski in which the former was dismissed after five seasons. Tech was driven by five seniors who played 62 percent of the minutes and scored 76 percent of the points. Further, four of them arrived as transfers, three of them playing only their senior season for Tech.
“I don’t know that having (transfers) be the foundation of how we assemble our team each year is something we can do,” Bobinski said.
Gregory relied heavily on transfers in the past two seasons. In 2014-15, transfers Charles Mitchell, Demarco Cox, Robert Sampson and Josh Heath played 44 percent of Tech’s minutes. Cox and Sampson, both frontcourt players, played only their senior seasons for the Jackets. The Jackets went into this season needing help on the perimeter and in the post, and got it from guard Adam Smith and forward James White, who came as graduate transfers, and forward Nick Jacobs, who transferred in 2014 from Alabama with one season of eligibility remaining.
“No one should slight (the strong finish) or speak poorly of that because it happened — it was real, and it was really terrific, but we were clearly heavily relying on guys that will be moving on after this semester, and that’s part of my thinking as I look ahead,” Bobinski said.
And while transfers have become a fact of life in college basketball, Bobinski had concerns about Gregory’s reliance on that stream for talent. Bobinski said that he began to think hard about Gregory’s future after the Jackets fell to 13-12 overall and 3-9 in the ACC. It was after that point that the Jackets ran off eight wins in the final 11 games, ending the season with a loss at San Diego State on Wednesday night.
“Those were great moments and moments that obviously we hope to enjoy a lot more of in the years ahead,” Bobinski said at a news conference. “To their credit, they were able to do that. But at the end of the day, the evaluation for me came down to, what does the future look like? Do we, in fact, have a clear path forward to greater success and higher levels of success in the years ahead? And my determination was, I didn’t see it. I ultimately just didn’t see it.”
Bobinski’s vision for the Tech program resembles what it has been in the past at its heights — a team that consistently makes the NCAA tournament with the potential to advance deep into the bracket and can be in position to compete for the ACC championship.
Bobinski said the search for a successor would begin immediately, even Friday evening. He is well-connected, having been athletic director at mid-major powerhouse Xavier before his hire at Tech in 2013, and he served as the chairman of the NCAA tournament selection committee.
The hire will be the third head coach on Tech’s payroll. The school is paying former coach Paul Hewitt $900,000 annually through the 2018-19 academic year. Tech also will be obligated to pay Gregory $806,250 next year and $537,500 in 2017-18.
“I can’t tell you there’s an unlimited pool of resources available, but on the other hand, I would tell you we’re not going to be constrained by that in our search,” Bobinski said.
Gregory’s tenure at Tech ends with a 76-86 overall record and 27-61 in the ACC. He is given ample credit for making vast improvements in the team’s academic performance and creating a culture of accountability, effort and character.
“I told Brian (on Friday), he’s done so many things to drag our program forward in very fundamental, foundational ways that we’re better for today and sometimes, when you have to do all that ground-level work, it’s hard to take the program to the next step,” Bobinski said.
