Monday, new Georgia Tech men’s basketball coach Scott Cross had left McCamish Pavilion’s Callaway Club, where he had held his introductory news conference, shook hands and met some of his new co-workers.
On his way to his next appointment, he answered a question about the matter that has loomed over the program for years.
Did he have enough financial support from the athletic department to win?
“They definitely are supporting at a competitive level and continuing the work to make it even better,” Cross told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “But there’s enough (support).”
For decades, Tech has been challenged to keep up with its peers in terms of coaching salaries, facilities and now, name, image and likeness deals, a disadvantage that has helped limit the ceilings of Yellow Jackets programs.
The notion of fielding teams that punch above their weight class is so ingrained in the athletic department’s mindset that Buzz’s outfit should include boxing gloves.
So it is that in Cross, Tech athletic director Ryan Alpert has found a coach who is not only willing to play that game but has already played it and won.
Cross has made a career out of squeezing water from stones.
Cross had a .583 winning percentage in 12 seasons at Texas-Arlington. In the eight years before his hire, the winning percentage was .491. And in the eight years since, it is .470.
At Troy, he won at a .558 clip in seven years. In the seven years before that, the Trojans’ winning percentage was .353.
In his final two years, he took the Trojans to the NCAA Tournament back to back. In the 26 seasons at the Division I level before his hire, there had been just two NCAA trips.
“I was telling somebody, we had $180,000 (in NIL money) at Troy, and we beat San Diego State, and we had USC beat, and I bet they have $15 million and $20 million,” Cross said. “So there’s enough to win championships.”
So there’s your answer, at least for Day 1 of the Cross regime.
There’s enough to win championships.
Number of ACC championships won by Tech since 1993: One.
The good news for Cross is that he’ll have much more than $180,000 to work with. College basketball insider Jeff Goodman reported Friday that Tech is committed to getting into the ACC’s middle third in NIL resources, a detail confirmed to the AJC by a person familiar with the situation.
That factoid does require some nuance. Getting into the middle third could mean a huge jump — No. 18 to No. 7 — or a modest step — from No. 13 to No. 12 — among other permutations.
Evidence — such as the retention of forward Baye Ndongo and the signing of four-star prospect Mouhamed Sylla — would suggest that Tech wasn’t scraping the bottom of the ACC with its funding.
Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC
Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC
I asked Alpert whether the program, to this point, had been funded to a level where it could be competitive with former coach Damon Stoudamire. He had a one-word answer.
“Yes.”
But Alpert’s commitment to increasing support simultaneously suggests he understood it needed to be greater. (Tech’s intended move is probably something like 11th or 12th to ninth.)
“I would say that, any coach we talked to, that was their first question,” Alpert said. “I think that talking to others that had openings this cycle and last, in the new modern era of NIL and revenue share it’s the first question and rightfully so of any coach you talk to.”
It now falls upon Alpert and his staff to make that commitment more than a sound bite. It is a big job and probably won’t be easy.
After two decades in which the Jackets have mostly served as an ACC doormat, interest in the program is possibly as low as it’s been since Bobby Cremins arrived from Appalachian State in 1981 and ushered in the greatest era in program history.
Committing to being in the middle third isn’t the same thing as actually being in the middle third.
“We haven’t had maybe the same amount of integration and involvement as it had back when Bobby was coaching,” Alpert said. “So where we start today is not where we’re going to finish from a resource standpoint.”
For whatever it’s worth, Alpert has some leads. He said that, even since Cross’s hire was announced on Friday, he had had “significant conversations” with donors and companies that want to be involved.
“This program is going to need everybody to get back involved,” he said.
There is no time to lose.
The event where Cross was heading from the news conference?
A reception with donors and former players.
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