Finishing in the bottom three of the ACC and not making the 15-team conference tournament has at least one advantage.
Georgia Tech athletic director Ryan Alpert’s search for a new basketball coach can begin in earnest earlier than many of his competitors.
After dismissing coach Damon Stoudamire after three seasons, Alpert will have plenty of candidates to consider. Given the scale of the challenge — leadership of a program that has been to one NCAA Tournament since 2010 — Alpert could lean toward a coach with head-coaching experience.
It could be a competitive cycle. Boston College and Kansas State are also hiring. Pitt, Syracuse, Providence, Arizona State and Oklahoma could be soon.
Here are seven names that could be on Alpert’s list:
Scott Cross, Troy — Probably the most obvious potential candidate, Cross, 51, has built a consistent winner at Troy.
Before his hire in 2019, the Trojans had recorded eight losing seasons out of the previous nine. But Cross has led Troy to five consecutive 20-win seasons and has won or shared the Sun Belt regular-season title the past two years, also winning the conference tournament last year.
The Trojans were to play Georgia Southern for the Sun Belt tournament title Monday night, seeking the first back-to-back NCAA trips in the school’s Division I history.
Notably, Tech executive deputy AD Brent Jones was previously the Troy AD and hired Cross. Tech almost certainly would face fierce competition for Cross.
Justin Gainey, Tennessee associate head coach — Another coach with a connection within the athletic department, as Alpert was deputy AD at Tennessee before his hire at Tech.
In support of coach Rick Barnes, Gainey has helped keep the Volunteers among the premier programs in the country for the past five seasons.
However, Gainey, 48, has never been a head coach and in six assistant-coach jobs has not had much experience in a successful rebuild, a task he would have at Tech.
Casey Alexander, Belmont — Alexander has won big at Belmont with seven consecutive 20-win seasons. Significantly, Alexander, 53, has kept the Bruins a midmajor power even as they moved up in competition from the Ohio Valley Conference to the Missouri Valley Conference in 2022.
Before Belmont, Alexander notched three consecutive 20-win seasons at Lipscomb, which had one such season in the 12 years before his arrival. He also had the program at Stetson moving in the right direction before Belmont hired him away.
John Groce, Akron — You may remember Groce from his five seasons at Illinois, a moderately successful tenure before he was fired.
In his nine seasons at Akron, the 54-year-old Groce has built a powerhouse. The Zips have a 100-28 record in MAC play over the past seven seasons, with three NCAA trips (and potentially a fourth this year) at a school that had four NCAA appearances in school history before Groce.
He’s another who should have plenty of interest.
Brooks Savage, East Tennessee State — On top of having revived the Buccaneers program over the past three seasons, including the Southern Conference regular-season title this year, Savage has another line on his resume that might stand out. Starting in 2020, the 40-year-old coach was an assistant at Wake Forest to Steve Forbes when he pulled the Demon Deacons out of their decadelong funk, a task similar to what Tech faces now.
The Buccaneers play Furman on Monday night for a spot in the NCAA Tournament.
But while he has worked up the ladder from the junior-college ranks, his head-coaching experience of three years at a SoCon school isn’t vast.
Tony Skinn, George Mason — In his first head-coaching job, the 43-year-old Skinn has won big – a 70-29 record and a share of the school’s first Atlantic-10 regular-season title in 2024-25, along with league coach of the year honors.
He has handled the portal’s turbulence effectively, winning with vastly different lineups each season. For what it’s worth, George Mason’s AD is former Tech basketball captain and administrator Marvin Lewis.
His experience isn’t considerable, and it has largely been keeping winning programs going.
Mitch Henderson, Princeton — Given that the Tigers just finished a 9-20 season (the program lost two high-profile players to transfer and redshirt), this would be something of a gutsy hire for Alpert.
But Henderson, a coach at Princeton for 14 seasons and a former star at the school, has racked up seven 20-win seasons and won the Ivy League twice. He’s someone who would understand Tech’s academic challenges. But, like others, he took over a successful program and has built on it.
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