By: Kenneth Harrison

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

Recently, Georgia Tech fired men’s basketball head coach Damon Stoudamire

. When he was hired in 2023, I thought it was a great move. He’s a former NBA player and I thought that would lead to getting better recruits at Tech.

A 12-game losing streak to close the season left Georgia Tech with an 11-20 record and a last-place 2-16 mark in the ACC. Stoudamire went 42-55 over three seasons with the Yellow Jackets.

According to Stoudamire’s contract, Georgia Tech is set to owe him $2.6 million over the next two years, a number that is subject to offset if he takes another job.

Athletic director Ryan Alpert was hired in July from Tennessee. He’s in his first-year in Atlanta and he needs to make a move to save this program from becoming irrelevant. Tech has made just one NCAA tournament appearance since 2010.

“On behalf of Georgia Tech, I want to thank Damon for his commitment to the Institute, our men’s basketball program and, most importantly, our student-athletes,” Alpert said in a statement released by the school. “He is highly respected and admired throughout the Georgia Tech community and has been a strong representative of the Institute. We wish him the very best.”

Scott Cross was hired as the new head coach over the weekend. He was the head coach at Troy for seven seasons (2019-26) and he also served as the head coach at Texas-Arlington for 12 years (2006-2018).

Cross has won seven conference championships and 350 games in 19 seasons as a head coach – including five-straight 20-win seasons and back-to-back Sun Belt Conference regular-season and tournament titles at Troy.

“Coach Cross is a proven winner with 350 career victories and seven conference championships on his resume,” Alpert said in a statement. “His combination of experience, success and development of student-athletes, both on and off the court, makes him the perfect person to carry on the proud tradition of Georgia Tech men’s basketball. He is a great fit for our program, the Institute and the Georgia Tech and Atlanta communities.”

Tech deputy executive AD Brent Jones, who came to Tech from Troy, where he served as AD — made him the prime candidate for Alpert.

Cross has shown that he can take over a struggling program and turn them into winners. He has also excelled at developing players. He’s coached three conference players of the year (2025 – Troy’s Tayton Conerway, 2017 – UTA’s Kevin Hervey, 2010 – UTA’s Marquez Haynes) and 25 players that have earned all-conference honors in his 19 seasons as a head coach, including 12 first-team selections. The total includes four first-team all-Sun Belt honorees and six total all-conference selections in his seven seasons at Troy.

When he was hired at Troy, he took over a program that had finished with a losing record in eight of the previous nine seasons and had been to the NCAA Tournament twice since moving up to Division I in 1993.

Tech is currently the worst team in the ACC, so there’s nowhere to go but up.