Seldom has being fired turned out more favorably than for Paul Hewitt. Had Georgia Tech shown enough patience with Hewitt to give him one more season, he’d still be coaching a rebuilding Yellowjackets team with minimal hope of making the NCAA tournament. Instead he now has a lavish buyout, a fresh start and a new team likely to be among next year’s preseason top 25. Hewitt landed the most attractive remaining Division I head coaching vacancy on Saturday when George Mason hired him to replace new Miami coach Jim Larranaga. In addition to his salary of nearly $1 million per year at George Mason, Hewitt will still receive every penny of his $7.2 million buyout from Georgia Tech. What makes the George Mason job so appealing is that there’s potential for instant success. The Patriots, of course, made a historic Final Four run in 2006, returned to the NCAA tournament in 2008 and bring back the core of a conference championship team that beat Villanova in the first round of the NCAA tournament last month. Whether Hewitt is the right choice to take the torch from Larranaga is a subject worthy of more debate. Hewitt led Siena to back-to-back conference titles in 1999 and 2000 and took Georgia Tech to its lone national title game in 2004, but he’d struggled to turn stellar recruiting classes into successful seasons since then.  Not only had Georgia Tech missed the NCAA tournament in four of the past six seasons prior to Hewitt’s firing last month, attendance had also dwindled and the atmosphere surrounding the program had become somewhat caustic. In Feb. 2010, Hewitt sent out a bizarre series of tweets challenging the fan base to remain loyal even as the underachieving Yellowjackets struggled to reach the NCAA tournament. “Are you a critic or a supporter of this team?” he wrote. “Supporters will continue to watch this team fight.” The reception will surely be more favorable for Hewitt at George Mason At Georgia Tech, Hewitt’s teams finished above .500 in ACC play just once in 11 years. He’s well set up to do far better than that immediately at George Mason and he’ll need to in order to prove he’s the right choice.

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George Mason gives recently fired Paul Hewitt a fresh start