If you don’t succeed, try try again. And then try try and try again is the thought process at Georgia Tech, as ESPN’s Jeff Goodman is reporting that they will be bringing head coach Brian Gregory for a fifth season in Atlanta.
After delivering four straight 20+ win seasons for the Dayton Fliers, Gregory has struggled to remove the Yellow Jackets from the bottom of the ACC basement.
In four years, Gregory has led his club above .500 just once (17-16 in 2013) and he’s only 19-51 in conference games. This past year was by far the worst and most frustrating. The Yellow Jackets went just 3-15 in the ACC, but they lost 12 games (plus their only ACC tournament game) by a total of 47 points.
I’ll let this guy sum of Georgia Tech fan’s reaction to the news…
“@GoodmanESPN: Brian Gregory expected to coach Georgia Tech next season, sources told ESPN.” NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
— Chason Smith (@SmittyBaller24) March 16, 2015
Of course one reason for keeping him may be the fact that the school is already still paying for a former fired coach, but maybe the administration saw the bright side in all those close loses.
One of the problems that Gregory has had is keeping his guys around, as there are seven players who would have been juniors and seniors on this year’s team that eventually jumped ship, including potential All-ACC player Robert Carter this offseason.
The coaching staff has tried to fix these holes by bringing in one-year bandaids like Robert Sampson and Demarco Cox, but it’s hard to build a winning program with graduate transfers.
Next season they return (we assume) Charles Mitchell, Marcus Georges-Hunt, Josh Heath and Quinton Stephens and we’ll see about Chris Boldin. Plus, expect much bigger roles for Tadric Jackson (who started when Boldin was suspended), A.D. Gueye and the big fella, Ben Lammers.
When it comes to recruiting, Tech only has one signed, sealed and delivered in 3-star recruit Sylvester Ogbonda. The 6’11 center is ranked 26th at his position.
While the roster won’t improve, hopefully the experience of a painful 2014-15 will help this team grow to at least a .500 team in ACC play.
