MONDAY MORNING SCOOP: Gainey hired. When is the presser? What’s next? What type of staff will Justin Gainey assemble?

NC State has hired Justin Gainey as its next head basketball coach, bringing the NC State job back in the family for the first time in 15 years.

So what’s next, and what are we hearing?

– Justin will fly in tomorrow, and we’re told NC State plans on announcing him officially on Wednesday at the Lenovo Center.

– We’ll have more on how this all went down, but there is a faction that believed Justin was the smarter hire over Schertz from the beginning. Obviously, that is not saying Gainey is a better coach than Josh Schertz right now, because Gainey has never actually had a head coaching job. But there was conversation internally on whether you hire a hot name, more proven, but with larger aspirations, or if you hire a great basketball mind who is loyal, willing to build, and someone you can keep around without being held hostage yearly. The thinking is that you’d be able to create more consistency and stockpile NIL. There were significant figures on that side of the aisle for sure that made the choice a lot more down the middle than was initially reported.

– Now, what will the staff look like? That’s the question everyone is now asking. I don’t know the full answer to that, but those believing that Gainey is just going to bring all former players as his entire staff, I don’t believe that to be the case. As fun as that would be for fans of the Gainey era,  I do think the administration will have some say as to what his initial year 1 staff looks like.

– Hodge and Levi on staff? Again, this is a question that is being asked, so I’m going to address it. I know Gainey is close with both of them, and I believe both would take a position on staff if offered, but neither is a done deal at this point, and I’m truly unsure what the staff will end up looking like. The general feeling is that Boo will likely want someone with HC experience on the staff and someone with a Euro-pipeline. Anyone with HC experience would likely be slotted as an assistant (I’d assume this would be an offense-minded guy), but for the pipeline to Europe, it may not need to be an assistant per se. We will not float names at this time, but keep an eye out, as I’m sure some will surface soon, but I know Pack fans would really like to see these guys on staff (your social media responses have made that clear).

– The prior note is touching on something we’ll probably find out sooner than later. How much control does the admin want over the staff in year 1. We’re told it’s going to be some, but obviously not full control. How much is the question that would answer the question in the previous note.

– I believe the NC State admin may have some say over the GM and analytics role. I’m not sure what Gainey has in terms of relationships with true basketball analytics guys, but we know the current NC State admin really liked some of the analytics strategy that was taking place under Will Wade’s team. Remember, Kevin Keatts staff didn’t have much in terms of high-level analytics, and it led to a lot of questions about things like style of play, rotation, and scheduling. Last year, NC State was an analytics darling most of the year, and its scheduling is what ended up getting them into the tournament. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some potential carryover there. More on that later.

– No word on Gainey’s salary at NC State, but he was paid $600k by Tennessee last year. So he’s going to get a significant raise. And we’ve spent a lot of time talking about how NC State would deal with buyouts (Byington/Schertz), but by hiring Gainey, you don’t have to worry about that. So the $4M from LSU comes to NC State free and clear. That’s extra money to build a roster on top of NIL (likely through rev share).

– Stay tuned. We’ll have more as it breaks.