NCAA Basketball: UNC, Kansas among top head coaching hires from 2003

9. Brian Gregory (Dayton)

Dayton has seen some very solid basketball over the years. Their 2003 team was pretty great and it led to Oliver Purnell being poached by Clemson, leaving the program looking for a new leader. One of the solid programs in the A10, Dayton decided to hire a young Big Ten assistant to keep the momentum going.

Brian Gregory is an Illinois native who spent nearly a decade on staff at Michigan State under legendary coaches Jud Heathcote and Tom Izzo. Also a former assistant at Toledo and Northwestern, Gregory didn’t have any head coaching experience when Dayton brought him aboard, but that didn’t dissuade the Flyers and he paid off their trust.

Running his program, Gregory won plenty of games in eight seasons in Dayton. He led the Flyers to a pair of NCAA Tournament appearances and also won the NIT in 2010. There were some down seasons during his tenure, but Gregory still built a solid program and set up this team well to succeed in the future. Gregory would depart for Georgia Tech in 2011, leaving behind a solid legacy with the Flyers.