Georgia Tech athletic director Mike Bobinski has felt the same frustration with the basketball season that Yellow Jackets fans have experienced.
When Tech plays at No. 23 Miami on Wednesday night (9 p.m., Fox Sports South), the Jackets will try to win their first ACC game after seven consecutive losses. In five of the seven defeats, the scoring margin has been three points or less at the one-minute mark of the second half.
“It hasn’t gone the way we all would like it to go,” Bobinski said Tuesday. “We certainly haven’t achieved the results that equate to the amount of effort that’s been put in from our coaches and our players and everybody working at it.”
That said, he sought to take heat off Gregory, whom many Tech fans want replaced. Asked if he had any problems with the way the team was being coached, Bobinski replied, “Not a bit. Nope.”
While Bobinski’s is the most important opinion, it is not necessarily a popular one. As losses have mounted, Tech fans on message boards and social media have called for a change in regime. Bobinski said he understood the frustration, but that the timing for conversations about Gregory’s job was inappropriate.
“We’re in the midst of the season and trying to right the ship,” he said. “The only thing that makes sense to do is be supportive of our coaches, our players and everyone that’s working hard, give them every bit of encouragement we can.”
Gregory is in his fourth season at Tech with an overall record of 52-62 and 16-43 in the ACC. Tech is 9-10 this season. Gregory’s contract, which was extended by a year at the start of the 2013-14 season, runs through the 2017-18 season at $1.075 million per season. Despite Tech enduring the fourth 0-7 start in ACC play in school history, Bobinski said he sees improvement.
“It’s really hard to say that when you don’t have the results to show for it,” Bobinski said. “It seems like a hollow statement and I fully recognize that, but I have seen things that have gotten better. What has happened is we’ve sort of had fits and starts, and while some things have gotten better, it’s like plugging a dyke. You stick your finger in there, water pops out somewhere else.
“What we haven’t had is that collective improvement on a night-in, night-out basis where everybody’s sticking to the plan and doing it the way we’re supposed to be doing it.”
For example, Tech was the least accurate 3-point shooting team in Division I after the Syracuse game Jan. 7, making 23.4 percent of its attempts. The Jackets have vastly improved since, shooting 32.9 percent in the five games since. That includes an 0-for-12 total against Virginia, the Jackets’ first game without a 3-pointer since February 2005.
Tech has typically played solid defense. However, when attempting a second-half comeback against Boston College on Sunday, the Jackets allowed the Eagles to shoot 59.1 percent, which was almost 16 percentage points higher than the Tech’s defensive field-goal percentage entering the game.
It was the second conference loss to a team with a first-year coach and no other ACC wins (Wake Forest was the other). Further, while the Eagles presented an unattractive matchup, the announced attendance of 5,587 was the lowest for any ACC game at three-year-old McCamish Pavilion, not counting two games last season that were affected by ice storms.
To make the postseason, which Bobinski said he thought was possible going into the season and after the 9-3 start in non-conference play, Tech will need a stunning turnaround over the final 11 regular-season games, which includes matchups with North Carolina, Duke and Louisville.
“Obviously, we’ve raised the degree of difficulty on that at this point in time, there’s no question about that,” Bobinski said. “You’ve got to adjust and continue to find objectives and goals that are meaningful for the rest of the season.”
Beating the Hurricanes would be the first.
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