UPDATED - Georgia Tech Basketball: Brian Gregory Officially to Return to Tech

UPDATE: 3/16 - 3:15 p.m.

Ken Sugiura has confirmed the initial report that Brian Gregory will indeed return to the Flats.

I'm not gonna lie, I checked my calendar a few times to make sure it wasn't April Fool's day, and unfortunately it wasn't.

Brian Gregory expected to coach Georgia Tech next season, sources told ESPN. There was speculation Yellow Jackets might make move now.

— Jeff Goodman (@GoodmanESPN) March 16, 2015

That was certainly some shocking news. After various reports came out in the last week reporting that Gregory's firing was imminent, no one was expecting this.

And quite frankly, I only have a couple guesses as to why Mike Bobinski elected to keep Gregory around for another season.

Money

This was very likely one of the determining factors in Bobinski's decision. In addition to the $2.4 million owed to Gregory, should he have been fired, the Athletic Association still has an outstanding balance of $3.6 million to pay over the next four years to Gregory's predecessor, Paul Hewitt.

So, in total, that is $6 million that Tech would be paying to coaches for not coaching, paid out over a certain amount of years, not all at once. Hewitt gets paid $900,000 per year from us currently until 2019 and Gregory's would probably extend to about the same point in time, which would put him at about $800,000 a year to not coach, giving us a total of $1.7 million between two guys for not coaching.

Not only that, but Tech would also have to hire a new coach and give him a pretty solid salary, roughly another $1 million. Quite personally, I'd be hard-pressed to find a coach worth giving $2.7 million a year to come coach at Tech for $1 million a year.

Maybe we aren't that far away

Another outlook on this could be that Bobinski looked at more than just the record when he made this decision. He looked that the amount of close games we played.

It felt like in nearly every single game we played, we would be right there with them up until the very end when Tech would just fall apart. No one can say for certain why that was the case, but perhaps Bobinski and Gregory discussed it and put a plan into place to fix this problem.

We'll certainly have a young team returning next season, and if Gregory could miraculously draw in a player like Jaylen Brown, that could very well put us over the top.

Until Bobinski releases a statement regarding the decision, if it is indeed the decision because remember, nothing has been finalized yet, we will not know a reason.

What are your thoughts on the rumors of Brian Gregory staying with Tech?