Georgia Tech players were informed of coach Brian Gregory’s dismissal by athletic director Mike Bobinski at McCamish Pavilion Friday afternoon. In a hastily arranged meeting, with some players calling in by phone to listen in, Bobinski told the team of the change and took questions from players. He said it was a “tough” meeting given the close ties players have with Gregory.
“They have a great appreciation, particularly for who Brian is, and all the guys,” Bobinski said. “It wasn’t a lightly heard piece of news on their part. They were certainly struck by it. But I thought, again, they handled themselves extremely well, asked good questions, so appreciate that. They’re solid guys.”
Assistant coaches Chad Dollar, Tom Herrion and Mamadou N’Diaye will be retained in the interim, Bobinski said, to provide supervision for the team until a new coach is hired. Bobinski said he will send them to the Final Four, where the annual National Association of Basketball Coaches convention takes place, per usual. They will not go on the road recruiting, however. It is possible that a new coach could retain one or more assistants.
Tech has three signees, guard Josh Okogie of Shiloh High, forward Romello White of Wheeler High and Christian Matthews of Fort Washington, Md. Bobinski said at the news conference that he had already been able to get in touch with one of them and hoped to reach the other two by the end of the night.
“The only conversation to this point, I certainly encouraged them to not do anything rash, allow this process to play out and have a conversation with the new head coach,” Bobinski said. “Emotional reactions are sort of the flavor of the day here when things happen. I get that. However, I would encourage people to sort of take a little bit of a deep breath and let the next, whether it be week, 10 days, not a whole lot longer than that, play out and then there’ll be a lot more certainly as opposed to speculation.”
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