And there it is! The worst kept secret over the past week or two, Ryan Odom has agreed to become the next head coach of the Virginia Cavaliers Men’s Basketball program. If you’re not familiar with Coach Odom (CRO? We’ll workshop it), he is the son of Dave Odom, who had a great run at Wake Forest, coaching Randolph Childress and Tim Duncan, among others. What you’ll hear more commonly, though, is that Dave Odom was an assistant coach at UVa under Terry Holland; so Ryan spent a good chunk of his childhood in Charlottesville.
Having intimate ties to the area, and the Commonwealth in general (his previous stint was at VCU, which we’ll discuss momentarily), is certainly a plus and something the administration would have valued when making their hiring decisions. CTB was a legendary coach, but his ties being closest to Wisconsin and his staff’s ties to the west coast always felt a bit removed from the region. In the same way Bennett was always associated with his father and the Midwest, Odom will be associated with his father and the Mid-Atlantic; which is likely to be a feather in his cap among local donors and talent.
That’s not where his ties to the University, end, though. Of course, most Hoos fans will know that Odom was the head coach of UMBC on that fateful night on March 16, 2018 when they upset our beloved Cavaliers in the first #1 vs. #16 seed upset of all time. We will no doubt be reminded of this on almost every broadcast from now until the end of his tenure; so get excited about that… but there’s also the opportunity to tie a poetic bow on that storyline. Should Odom be successful for us, that loss will not only be the spark for our National Championship, it could also be the spark for our ability to move on from such a beloved coach in Tony Bennett.
I suggest we embrace it… there’s going to be no avoiding it.
So, who is Ryan Odom? At 50 now (51 in July), he should have plenty of time left in the tank, considering he’s just reached his first major coaching job and has plenty of experience working, and being successful within the current NIL/portal landscape.
He started coaching in 1996 as an assistant at South Florida, and bounced around a bunch of places, including a seven-year stint as an assistant coach for Seth Greenberg at Virginia Tech (yes, in addition to all of this, he was also a Hokie for a while!). After Tech, he spent the next five years at Charlotte as an assistant, then associate head coach, and eventual interim head coach in 2015. After a year extending his head coaching chops in Division II, he received his first full-time head coaching gig at UMBC in 2016.
His time at UMBC was the beginning of his ascent. He inherited a program that had been to the NCAA Tournament only once since it moved into DI in 1980. In the season before he joined, they had finished 7-25. In his first year, they finished 21-13; a whopping 14 win improvement. His second season, he won the America East Tournament, made the NCAA Tournament for the second time in school history, upset UVa in historic fashion, and was competitive in the second round in a 7-point loss to Kansas St. Over his final three years with the program, he kept the program near the top of the conference, losing in the championship game of the tournament once and tying Vermont for a share of the regular season title another time (for the first time since 2008).
In his five years at UMBC, he took a floundering program and made it consistently competitive with some unimaginable highs along the way. From there, he had two other head coaching stints, two years each; Utah State and VCU. With each, he missed the NCAA Tournament in his first season and then took the team to the dance in his second; losing in the first round with both. Ostensibly, he took the Utah State job to upgrade his profile and resources at a mid-major (from a low-major), and then took the next opportunity to get back to the Mid-Atlantic where he’d coached most of his career. And now, he’s joined us for what will hopefully be a fruitful and long-term relationship at a major coaching job in one of his childhood towns.
Personally, I’m excited for the change, excited for his ability to be successful across multiple different environments, and am excited to see how he parlays his ties to the area and increased resources into his vision for the program. As one of the top mid-major coaching candidates from this cycle, sometimes a decision just makes too much sense.
We’ll find out more in the days and weeks to come – who he brings with him among his coaching staff, who (if any) he retains from our previous staff, who (if any) he retains from our players, brings with him from VCU, and attracts in the portal. There’s a lot to look forward to and there will be a lot to discuss.
From a Cuts From The Corner perspective, I’m going to change the offseason schedule to accommodate all of this. There will be no lessons learned piece nor season recap piece around things that went well and areas for improvement – because we have a clean slate! Instead, I will start by writing two pieces – one doing a deep dive into CRO’s offensive systems over his time as a head coach and then another piece on his defensive system. From there, I’ll do a Tracking a Transfer piece on each incoming player (which I expect will be the most we’ve seen). Then, once the roster has been solidified and all of those pieces have been written, I’ll do a piece on how I’d ideally like to see that roster come together for the new season in terms of playing time and expectations on how the players fit into what Coach Odom likes to do. I imagine this schedule will take the majority if not all of the offseason to get through; so it’ll be a prolonged schedule – but recording for the offensive and defensive systems has begun!
In the meantime, I’d like to take this opportunity to offer a hearty welcome to Ryan Odom as our new head coach! I’m looking forward to seeing what he can accomplish and looking forward to analyzing/discussing all of it with you all as we move into this new era of UVa Men’s Hoops.
See you throughout the offseason!
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