Coaches on the Hot Seat

Connell62

Connell62

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dtm1997 said:
There are absolutely no good reasons for him to consider us outside of the challenge of taking on 4 HOF coaches in their twilight in maybe a better hoops league. Admittedly, he's more my dream candidate than anything based in reality.
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Feels a little weird talking about coaching vacancies and potential replacements with BG still here. I will still support him and the squad, but I will be shocked if he is retained at this point.

If you are ask me, chances are much more likely that we go with someone middle of the road (good track record of success as a head coach, but not elite), than an A-lister, but I think that should Bobinski decide to go that route, GT has a better chance of landing the "Swing for the Fences" type of candidate than some of the other high majors that have been in the market in recent years.

The ACC is widely considered as one of the (if not the) best basketball conference in the land, and you would get to compete against the best of the best as a coach. While we have been down in recent years, we have plenty of basketball tradition, and a fanbase that is starving to be relevant again. This is not to mention the level of talent in the Southeast and some of the premier AAU programs that are based here. A good coach could recruit Georgia alone and have outstanding talent.

Without a doubt, this is a pivotal time for the future of our basketball program. The right move could quickly springboard us back to where we all want to be, but the wrong move could set us back another 7-8 years.
 
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orientalnc

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connell62 said:
If you are ask me, chances are much more likely that we go with someone middle of the road (good track record of success as a head coach, but not elite), than an A-lister, but I think that should Bobinski decide to go that route, GT has a better chance of landing the "Swing for the Fences" type of candidate than some of the other high majors that have been in the market in recent years.

The ACC is widely considered as one of the (if not the) best basketball conference in the land, and you would get to compete against the best of the best as a coach. While we have been down in recent years, we have plenty of basketball tradition, and a fanbase that is starving to be relevant again. This is not to mention the level of talent in the Southeast and some of the premier AAU programs that are based here. A good coach could recruit Georgia alone and have outstanding talent.

Without a doubt, this is a pivotal time for the future of our basketball program. The right move could quickly springboard us back to where we all want to be, but the wrong move could set us back another 7-8 years.
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Wright is already at an elite program. He may want a new challenge and the ACC would certainly offer that. Still it seems he is embedded there and happy with it.
 
dtm1997

dtm1997

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I agree with both of you @connell62 & @orientalnc.

I do think we have the foundation to land a swing for the fences type of coach for the wright $$$$, but I also realize Jay Wright is me being in a dream world and he's got a pretty great situation at 'Nova.
 
kg01

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dtm1997 said:
Nope, that's pretty accurate, but please refer to him as LazyAD, not DRad.
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First step is admitting you have a problem. Proud of you dtm. ;)

I agree Wright would be a great hire but also agree it's highly unlikely. Less likely even than my longshot (Matta).

GT is still a sleeping giant of a program especially in the new ACC.

I'm sure guys like K realize what we could be if we finally got it rolling again. Remember when we played Duke the year after the championship game and K was all pissy at the end-of-game handshake. I always imagined that was him trying to send a message or w/e. Maybe it was just me.
 

RamblinRed

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I think Lavin keeps his job at St. John's. Fans are much quicker to fire coaches than AD's are. He is more likely than not to make the NCAA and you don't fire coaches when they make the Tourney.
Heck, there is already a good portion of the NCSU fanbase ready to can Gott and hire Archie Miller and there is 0% chance of that happening for about 3 years (Gott made the NCAA his first 3 years and the AD who hired him is still there).

The other truth to always keep in mind, if the AD who hired the coach is still there, that coach will always get at least 1 more year than the fans think he should because AD's don't like firing coaches they hired, it makes themselves look bad.
 
Peacone36

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orientalnc said:
I am trying to think of just one reason why Jay Wright would even return MBob's call. He is a Pennsylvania native, married to a former Villanova cheerleader, and the star basketball coach in the entire state. And there are more college basketball fans in Philly than the entire state of Georgia. I doubt we could lure him away with money, since we don't have ton of it. Plus, I imagine we would not be the first school to think of his name when searching for a new coach. This is a nice third glass of Woodford fantasy, but not realistic.
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My thought on the subject is, Make him say no. Dont say "ah why would he.....", call him, whats the worst that could happen?
 

RamblinRed

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Peacone36 said:
My thought on the subject is, Make him say no. Dont say "ah why would he.....", call him, whats the worst that could happen?
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The key is to have 1 big name, not 2, not 5 -1. You move quickly on that one. If something comes out of it great - if not you move on to the rest of your list.
Otherwise you end up spending too much time chasing 'names' while losing ground and time with ones that would be interested.

Supposedly Brad Stevens was approached (or more likely his agent) when Hewitt was fired, GT was given a quick not interested and it moved on.
 

RamblinRed

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Would love Wright but hard to see why he would leave a program he built up and has running smoothly, leave an area he and his family are very comfortable in - for a job in an area they have never lived in and have to rebuild against very strong top competition. Also, no way GT can offer more money than Nova. They are already giving him about $2.5M per year.
 
Gibson

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I keep going back and forth with this in my head and spoke to a former player last night by sheer luck of bumping into them (literally).

Does the GTAA have the $$$ to pay for this? I keep going back to no.. that the golden noose of Hewitt's contract will keep CBG another year...

Am I missing something? sorry, in the sea of posts I haven't done a ton of reading on the $$$ part of this.
 
dtm1997

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Gibson said:
I keep going back and forth with this in my head and spoke to a former player last night by sheer luck of bumping into them (literally).

Does the GTAA have the $$$ to pay for this? I keep going back to no.. that the golden noose of Hewitt's contract will keep CBG another year...

Am I missing something? sorry, in the sea of posts I haven't done a ton of reading on the $$$ part of this.
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@Gibson - @RamblinRed is the expert on this topic, but if I recall correctly, BG has a flat $650K buyout. Along with this, Hewitt & GTAA renegotiated his payouts over a longer timeframe at a lower amount. Same amount of money, just easier burden on cash flow.

There are several thoughts here. 1st, that $650K for BG's buyout would be a lot easier to raise from boosters or pay from cash flow & reserves. 2nd, ACC revenues are rising for us, providing more resources to spend on a coach. 3rd, I think we still had Gailey's buyout to deal with when we hired BG, which is now gone.

Hopefully, I got those right. Regardless, going rate for a quality ACC coach is going to be in the $1.5MM - $2.5MM range. We're going to need to spend that just to keep up with Wake & VT.
 

RamblinRed

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DTM has that correct.
At the time of the Gregory hire, we had $875K yr being paid to Gailey, we had $1.4M yr being paid to Hewitt and we were paying alot of debt on new facilities. This was also pre-new ACC TV Contract (and its 2 re-dos after expansion and ND).
Gailey is paid off. Hewitt's contract was renegotiated so that we pay $650K a year out to either 2018 or 2019.
if Gregory was let go after this season GT would owe him $650K. If we wait one more year it would be $250K. I doubt $400k in the grand scheme is likely to make a mateiral difference.

You are asking the right question and I suspect we should have a better sense of that after the season. But even if you look just at the BB only expenses. We had Gregory at $1.0M plus Hewitt at $1.4. So we were paying $2.4M a yr for a head coach. After renegotiating we are now paying Gregory $1.1M and Hewitt $650K - so $1.75M for HC.

if GT decides to go looking I am assuming GT can pay around $2M for the right candidate. Not all the candidates that I expect GT to look at would command that - frankly alot of the smaller school coaches that have been talked about on this thread would likely be in more of the $1-$1.5M range.
 
MidtownJacket

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Nope.. not with the kind of numbers that matter. The people who left (and frankly most of the most vocal critics of the program) won't come back till we win games consistently. They may talk about it, may even buy a 4 pack or something but until we are back in winning form the attendance will be similar regardless of coaches, imho.
 
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