Quotes from Georgia Tech athletic director Mike Bobinski from his news conference regarding the dismissal of basketball coach Brian Gregory
Opening statement
“Obviously, a tough day all the way around. These are never the days you look forward to in any business and certainly not in ours, particularly when there are really, really good people that are affected by decisions that we feel need to be made. And that makes it incredibly challenging. Not that it’s ever something that you look forward to, but when it’s somebody of the quality that Brian Gregory and his staff and everybody involved with that program are, it makes it even more challenging.
Just want to start with that and say that, that this is not something we came to lightly, again, in large part because of the person that Brian is. He’s a first-class guy and handled himself in our conversation as the complete professional that he is. I expected nothing less and he delivered in every way, and I know it was hard. It was hard. It was hard news to deliver and obviously not the news he wanted to hear, but to his great credit, he handled himself extremely well and I expected nothing less.”
On reaching the decision
“It’s something that I’ve been thinking about basically every minute of every day here for some period of time. When we got to that point in our season where we were sort of at that tipping point of 13-12 and 3-9 in the ACC, that wasn’t where I made my decision, but clearly, I started to think very hard about, ‘O.K., where are we going as a program? Do we have the pieces in place to see a brighter future and to see real progress beyond whatever might happen the rest of this year?’
Clearly, the end of the season was very strong and that’s to everybody’s credit. As I told Brian, and I told our players and all of our staff, we could have come unglued at that moment in time. And to everybody’s great credit, we didn’t. We finished in a very, very positive fashion and that’s something that we all appreciate. I appreciate it.
Our coaches and players should feel very proud of and no one can take that away from them. Those were great moments and moments that obviously we hope to enjoy a lot more of in the years ahead. But 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. And that led me to the decision that we need to make a change.”
On what he will be looking for in a candidate
“I would tell you this. From sort of the personal characteristic side, if I could have all of what Brian brought, I’d take all of that again. There’s very little, if anything there that I would do differently. He was as standup a guy and as first class and high integrity an individual as you could ever hope for – represented himself, our program, Georgia Tech, the Georgia Tech community in an absolutely first-class way. I don’t want to give up any of that.
First and foremost, we’re looking for that. Beyond that, I’m going to look for somebody that I believe has the capacity to articulate a vision and execute a plan for higher-level success. I believe we’re capable of more as we look ahead. We’ve got a tremendous arena, we’ve got a great practice facility, we’ve got a tremendous academic institution and we’re in a spectacular metropolitan area that provides all the elements for success in college basketball. We just need to a better job of leveraging that down the road and putting ourselves in a position to achieve all of the success that I believe we’re capable of.”
On the future
“I believe the plan will be to be bring somebody that can excite the fan base. I would tell you this about our fans: I love them, they’re incredibly loyal, and I think you can tell in those moments, particularly down the stretch, when we had some exciting games and we played a little better, they’re just thirsty and dying for success. When we start to do some good things, McCamish gets energized and it’s the way it’s supposed to be. You can feel it, you can see it in there. It’s just sort of a pent-up desire for our program to really get going again, and that’s what we’re hoping to accomplish in the years ahead. It won’t be snap-your-fingers-happen-overnight, but that’s what we’re hoping for, and that’s what we’re looking for and that’s what we intend to accomplish.”
On financial limitiations
“Financial realities are financial realities. Every organization has them. We certainly have them. I can’t tell you that there’s an unlimited pool of resources available, but on the other hand, I would tell you that we’re not going to be constrained by that in our search. We’re going to look for the very best person. And, obviously, there’s got to be a mutual degree of interest there. There’s got to be people that are interested in making a move at this point in their career but we’re going to be as aggressive as we possibly can in trying to make that happen.”
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