Georgia Tech hires Troy’s Scott Cross as men’s basketball coach
Georgia Tech has secured its next men’s basketball coach, as it made official the hire of Troy coach Scott Cross Friday morning.
The announcement followed reporting by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that many in the coaching industry believed Cross to be the choice of athletic director Ryan Alpert.
“Coach Cross is a proven winner with 350 career victories and seven conference championships on his resume,” Alpert said in a statement. “His combination of experience, success and development of student-athletes, both on and off the court, makes him the perfect person to carry on the proud tradition of Georgia Tech men’s basketball. He is a great fit for our program, the Institute and the Georgia Tech and Atlanta communities.”
Cross will come to Tech on the heels of Troy’s first back-to-back NCAA Tournament trips in its Division I history. Cross brings a record as a successful builder, a quality of no small importance for the Yellow Jackets program that has been a consistently low performer in the ACC.
He succeeds Damon Stoudamire, who was dismissed by Alpert on March 8. In the final of his three seasons, the Jackets finished in last place in the ACC.
Cross’ success at Troy and his connection to Tech deputy executive deputy AD Brent Jones — who came to Tech from Troy, where he served as AD — made him an unsurprising choice for Alpert.
Cross has led a successful rebuild of Troy’s program since his hire in 2019, culminating in the Trojans making back-to-back NCAA Tournament appearances after winning the Sun Belt Conference title.
In the tournament, Troy lost to Nebraska on Thursday in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
Cross, 51, took over a program that had finished with a losing record in eight of the previous nine seasons and had been to the NCAA Tournament twice since moving up to Division I in 1993.
The Trojans have won at least 20 games in each of the past five seasons, winning or sharing the league regular-season title in the past two.
He has accomplished this at a school that, before his hire, had won 20 games in a season only four times in 26 years, only once in back-to-back seasons.
It is that resume that surely spoke to Alpert, whose program has toiled in the underclass of the ACC for most of the past two decades.
The Jackets have made one NCAA Tournament appearance since 2010, failing to find any consistent success with coaches Brian Gregory, Josh Pastner and, most recently, Stoudamire.
Alpert dismissed Stoudamire after the Jackets went 11-20 and 2-16 in the ACC. His overall record was 42-55. He is the third consecutive Tech coach to be dismissed with a losing record at the school.
It has been a marked decline for a program that achieved two Final Four Trips and 15 NCAA appearances under the leadership of coaches Bobby Cremins and Paul Hewitt.
About the Author
Ken Sugiura is a sports columnist at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Formerly the Georgia Tech beat reporter, Sugiura started at the AJC in 1998 and has covered a variety of beats, mostly within sports.
More Stories
The Latest
