Mike Bobinski is giving Brian Gregory another chance — a chance with conditions. In a meeting with three reporters Monday, the Georgia Tech athletic director admitted he considered firing his basketball coach. “I jumped on both sides of the fence,” Bobinski said.
He landed on the side of continuity and, in Bobinski’s mind, fairness. Because Gregory inherited a program in actual shambles — Tech’s arena was being rebuilt when the coach arrived in 2011 — his AD didn’t feel that four years were enough for a full read. “A lot of things didn’t allow him to get off to a fast start,” Bobinski said.
About here, I should say that I respectfully disagree. We judge our Presidents in four-year increments; can we not do the same for a coach in a sport where one recruit can galvanize a program? About here, I note that Gregory inherited a team coming off a 13-18 season (5-11 in ACC play); in his fourth season, his Jackets were 12-19 and 3-15. Progress? Nah.
Give Bobinski this: He didn’t just say, “We’ve been unlucky.” (Though he did mention, several times, the astonishing number of close losses — 11 in ACC play — Tech sustained.) What he did say: “We had a miserable year.”
Bobinski said he told Gregory that his patience will run out “the minute I believe we’re not making substantive progress.” What constitutes progress? “It’s not as much a number as a clear sign … and a belief in the future.”
For all of you who believe that the only reason Gregory still has a job is that the Jackets can’t afford to pay him and Paul Hewitt — who was, in a stranger-than-fiction convergence, fired Monday by George Mason but who remains on Tech’s payroll through 2019 — not to coach … well, here’s what Bobinski said:
“We had figured all that (financial stuff) out. That was not a driver, not a factor, not a decision-maker here.”
In sum, Tech retained Gregory not because it was cheaper to keep him but because Bobinski feels this coach can lead the Jackets up from an oblivion partially of his making. You’re entitled to be skeptical, but I have to say I’m not. I believe Bobinski when he said he could have found the money if he needed it. Dan Radakovich found the money to fire Hewitt, did he not?
“It’s safe for you to assume that this (Gregory’s status) has been Topic 1 on my mind for a long time,” Bobinski said, and the best thing Gregory had going for him was that this AD knew him back when. “He was just up the street,” Bobinski said, meaning coaching Dayton when Bobinski was the athletic director at Xavier.
Back then, Gregory’s Flyers didn’t lose every close game. They beat Xavier six times in 21 tries when the Musketeers were really good. (Dayton wasn’t bad itself.) Bobinski isn’t yet inclined to write off this coach as an endgame bungler because he saw otherwise, albeit a while back.
That said, Bobinski broke out no real hosannas. He said he told Gregory, “Offense can’t be something we do between defensive possessions.” He said: “We can’t continue to be close.” He said of Tech: “The elements are in place. We have a great arena. This is a city that’s going to be attractive to a young man playing college basketball. There’s no reason not to have a successful college basketball program.”
On the court, Gregory hasn’t succeeded. The Jackets haven’t made the NIT in his four seasons and haven’t sniffed the only tournament that matters. Bobinski, who was chairman of the NCAA basketball committee in 2012-13, admitted to “a queasy feeling” when he watched the pairings on Selection Sunday. Of his 14th-in-the-15-team-ACC Jackets, the AD said: “There’d have to have been an awfully large bubble for us.”
What Gregory has done hasn’t been nearly good enough. What Bobinski is offering is one more year to make good, or at least better. “I don’t sit here in a conflicted state,” he said. “I know we’re going to get the best shot Brian has to offer.”
I credit Bobinski for making a difficult decision and offering his reasons why, but reasonable people can disagree reasonably. Me, I’m on the other side of that fence. Me, I’d have fired the guy.
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