Having answered this reporter’s many questions, Brian Gregory had one of his own. “Why do you think,” he asked in March, “that Year 3 should be the big year for a program?”
I gave my reasons: That by Year 3 a basketball coach should be able to stabilize a program gone bad – assuming he’d been hired to replace someone who’d gotten fired, as was the case with Gregory at Georgia Tech – and populate it with enough of his recruits to make it a winner. Hearing that, Gregory said he believed Year 4 would mark a truer test because “our first recruiting class (will become) upperclassmen.”
Not to be impolite, but there seemed an element of self-preservation in that thinking. The Jackets were then 13-16 in Year 3 under Gregory — they would upset No. 6 Syracuse the night after we spoke and finish 16-17 – and the theme of our conversation had been, “Why isn’t your team better?” Tuesday’s announcement that forward Robert Carter Jr. plans to transfer sent me back to that discussion: The top-rated recruit of Gregory’s Tech tenure would have become an upperclassman this fall.
Carter represented almost everything Tech and Gregory could want. He’s from Snellville. He’d picked the Jackets over Georgia and Florida State. He’s not leaving because he couldn’t handle the Institute’s academics. (Indeed, Tech noted in its release that he’d made the dean’s list in the spring semester.) He’s just leaving.
The same release quoted Gregory as calling Carter’s decision “disappointing.” Then this: “Transferring has become commonplace; it is now part of the culture and fabric of the college basketball landscape. You have to move on and keep building.”
Again, this struck me as self-serving. It’s true that basketball players are switching schools at a rate unseen. (Tech’s release included a handy link to a story referencing ESPN writer’s Jeff Goodman findings that more than 500 are transferring this offseason.) But Tech was the landing point for guard Trae Golden, who left Tennessee last summer and led the Jackets in scoring. Tech offered a home for Stacey Poole Jr. when he left Kentucky, and Poole’s arrival helped induce his brother Solomon – the second-biggest signee under Gregory – to come here.
But Solomon Poole was dismissed from the squad in February, and Golden and Daniel Miller and Kammeon Holsey competed their eligibility, and without Carter it’s hard to envision next season being any better than the past one, which finished below .500. All of which leaves a solid coach still seeking solid ground.
Hired from Dayton to bring stability to a program that had known wild mood swings under Paul Hewitt, Gregory brought the broad-shouldered Tom Izzo Method – defend and rebound and everything else will take care of itself – to the heavy-on-finesse ACC. The plan was (and is) sound, but in basketball method matters less than manpower. The Jackets look like a better-coached team than in their final years under Hewitt, but they’ve had no Chris Bosh or Jarrett Jack, no Thaddeus Young or Javaris Crittenton, no Gani Lawal or Derrick Favors.
In a way, that could have been for the better. All of those Hewitt recruits left early for the NBA. (Only Jack and Lawal weren’t one-and-dones.) As nice as McDonald’s All-Americans are to have, they tend not to stick around. An alternate route to success is the Mid-Major Way, which involves signing slightly lesser talents and letting them grow together. But that only works if, duh, they stay together.
Carter would have been Tech’s best player next season, but there will no next season for him at Tech. (Rumor holds that he’ll alight at Auburn, which would be doubly galling to Jackets backers. Who leaves the ACC for the SEC? Why align yourself with Bruce Pearl, who can’t actually recruit because he’s under NCAA sanction for his Tennessee transgressions?) Given that Tech has been worse (43-52) in Gregory’s first three seasons than in the final three under Hewitt (47-48), how much longer will this grace period last?
Minus four of the five leading scorers off a sub-.500 team, the season ahead — the pivotal Year 4 — looks decidedly unpromising. Of greater importance will be the November early signing period. Rivals lists eight in-state prospects among its 150 best national recruits; four identify Tech as a possible destination. Little that has happened these past three seasons has marked Gregory’s program as one on the rise. Even if it’s just the right guy’s signature on a letter-of-intent, something needs to go right soon.
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