Why do some of you want to fire Pastner? Every year the talent on the team gets better. This year we’ve seen we compete with anybody. We’ve taken great teams like Virginia down to the wire. We’ve beaten other great teams. The only single game we’ve not been in was with 1 day off. Last year was our first year over 0.500 in ACC play in like 20 years and we finished 5th. We’re trending to be around the same this year despite bull**** scheduling. We’ll have the most national top 150 guys on our roster that we’ve had since I can remember.
I am not 100% convinced we should fire Pastner, but mostly for practical reasons about the fact that the alternatives could be even worse. However, I have been lost as a dedicated GT basketball fan, and that is ashamed. I find that I have become very negative about the program under Pastner (and who wants to hear that cr@p?).
For me (and I am no basketball expert), we lose too many games where it looks to me like we have better players than the other guys. Our talent is improving and if we keep Reveno we can continue to get better, but imho, Reveno is really the guy who develops our bigs, and that is where I see the most remarkable player development (not so much in our guard play). And frankly, when we lose Reveno (and we will...someone will give him a shot at being the head coach somewhere soon) then i expect a stiff step backwards in the program.
Pastner's propensity to lose games not only to the Georgia States, Gramblings and Mercers of the basketball world helps make us a bit of a joke but then losing games like Clemson and (this year) Duke are also embarrassments. Losing games where you're better than the other guys is the mark of poor coaching, and makes you miss the Big Dance. Again, and again. And this pattern has been pretty consistent for 5 years now.
Add to that the cherry on top...some of his off court decisions. The way the Institute simply kicked LeBarrie to the curb for his mistake really pi@@ed me off. We let these guys go, they wind up going other places and effectively torturing us for the poor choice we made. LeBarrie did not deserve that.
Ultimately, I see Pastner as an immature coach who doesn't yet have the cohones to step up for the guys around him who might have made a mistake but deserve better, and that he has a ceiling at GT. And this year probably represents that ceiling as a program.
My own take is that we should likely keep him on one more year to see what he can accomplish next year with the 3 incoming recruits, but if it is simply another year like this one (or worse) then I would be spending the intervening months seeing if we could marshal the financial resources to make a change and who might represent a better option.