I agree that by the end of last season the team was playing at the level of a middle seed NCAAT team. But early season problems would have tanked any chance for an NCAAT bid.
When GT had nine consecutive NCAAT bids, the ACC had 8 teams. There were 29 conferences and each conference averaged 8 teams and mid-major programs were rarely seriously competitive with high major programs.
Today, there are 33 conferences averaging a little under 11 teams per conference. With the emergence of the AAU industry, there are more impactful players being produced and with the TV money, many Mid-Major schools have invested in their basketball programs to cash in on the honeypot. There are more (more than 50 more!) teams in serious competition for NCAAT bids.
The result is talent and coaching parity that is not only saturating the Power-5 level but well into the Mid-Major level as well. The result is that Power-5 conferences not only have more teams in them now than in days gone by, but the NCAAT selection panel is not dipping as deep into those Power conferences. So, in a 15 team conference noted for parity and only 4 teams highly likely to get a bid, from a purely probabilistic perspective, getting a bid is far less likely than it used to be. Sure, there are still a few Blue Chip programs that dominate, but those programs have budget and pay coaches in amounts that we can't sniff.
For the great majority of programs, competition for NCAAT bids has grown, which means that a coach can put a good team on the floor and coach them quite well and pivotal wins and losses can come down to things outside a coach's control like injuries, an official's call or luck.
I would conclude that applying the standard that a particular coach HAS to make the NCAAT in any one given year is rather arbitrary and self-defeating.
Anyway, who knows if there is going to be a season this year let alone an NCAAT. And even if there is one and we don't make it, where is the money going to come from to make changes?
The point being, thinking about changing coaches at the dawn of a highly uncertain but nevertheless promising season seems more than a little twisted to me.