Odom Era Begins at UVA

By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — In front of an audience sprinkled with people he’d met as a boy growing up in this college town, including several University of Virginia basketball legends, Ryan Odom took center stage Monday afternoon at John Paul Jones Arena.

At the press conference introducing him as the new head coach of the UVA men’s program, Odom harkened back to the seven years he lived in Charlottesville in the 1980s.

“This is the place where I fell in love with basketball,” said Odom, who was wearing an orange and blue tie. “This is the place where I was shaped in so many ways by the former players, the former coaches.”

His father, Dave Odom, was one of Terry Holland’s assistant coaches at Virginia back then. In 1989, the elder Odom left Virginia to become head coach at Wake Forest, and the family moved to Winston-Salem, N.C. But Ryan Odom, a former ball boy at UVA games at University Hall, treasured memories of his time in Charlottesville and never forgot those days.

“I’m so thankful to be home here at UVA,” said Odom, whose parents were seated a few feet in front of him. “I’m motivated to help continue to build this place and hopefully return it to greatness, and I couldn’t be more humbled and thankful and grateful to be here.”

Odom, 50, is relocating from Richmond to Charlottesville. He spent the past two seasons as head coach at Virginia Commonwealth University. VCU finished 28-7 this season after losing to BYU in the NCAA tournament’s first round.

Leaving VCU wasn’t easy, Odom said, but when he met recently with Jim Ryan and Carla Williams—Virginia’s president and athletics director, respectively—“it was evident to me that this was going to be the right place for me. We all have times in our life where God opens and closes doors. For me personally, I was at complete peace with whatever God decided. The door was going to be opened for me to come here and there was going to be an offer, or it was going to be closed and I was going to stay over at VCU.

“Sometimes in life the door closes on you and we wonder: Why on earth did that happen? Usually later on you figure out why that door closed on you.”

Odom smiled. “I’m so glad this door opened. I walk through that door with enthusiasm. I walk through that door with passion, with humility, with a desire to help continue to build this place, and that’s really what it’s all about to me.”

He takes over a program that finished with a losing record (15-17) for the first time since 2009-10. This was expected to be Tony Bennett’s 16^th season as Virginia’s head coach, but he stunned the hoops world by retiring in October.

Bennett stepped down two days before UVA’s closed scrimmage with VCU at JPJ, and Ron Sanchez was promoted from associate head coach to interim head coach.

“I remember walking out of here [after the scrimmage] just feeling for what they were going through,” Odom said. “To be able to watch them grow over the course of the season and do their absolute best every day and stand up for one another every single day was really impressive for me to watch.

“The staff that coached here for that many years, the people that gave everything to this place, I’m so thankful for everything that they did over the course of the 15 years together.”

Under Bennett, the winningest coach in program history, Virginia posted a 364-136 record and won the ACC tournament twice (2014 and 2018). The Wahoos captured six ACC regular-season titles and advanced to the NCAA tournament 10 times.

“We’re all in awe of him in general and the man that he is, the coach that he is, the person that he is,” Odom said.

Odom, of course, was the head coach of the 16^th-seeded UMBC team that upset No. 1 seed UVA in the first round of the 2018 NCAA tournament. If that was the low point of Bennett’s tenure, the high point came a year later. In Minneapolis, UVA defeated Texas Tech in overtime to win the NCAA title.

Odom said he knows he’s “following a legend. I’ll be honest, I’m at peace with that. I’m not afraid of it. I wouldn’t be standing here if I was afraid of it. I’m excited about it, and I’m going to need him, quite honestly.”

He telephoned Bennett recently, Odom said, “and we had a great conversation.”

Williams, in her opening remarks at the press conference, said she was focused on hiring “a coach that fits UVA, a coach with character, integrity, and emphasis on academics and care for our players. All of these traits will always be non-negotiable at UVA. But there was another foundational goal that guided every decision along the way: winning championships.”

In 10 seasons as a head coach—at Lenoir-Rhyne (21-10), Charlotte (8-11 in an interim role), UMBC (97-60), Utah State (44-25) and VCU (52-21)—Odom has compiled a record of 222-127. He’s taken UMBC, Utah State and VCU to the NCAA tournament.

Odom and his wife, Lucia, have two children: sons Connor and Owen.

Willliams, who thanked Bennett and Sanchez for their contributions to the program, said that as Virginia’s search neared its conclusion there “was one deeply rooted value remaining to address: Who can we entrust with the legacy of this program that has been shaped by the blood, sweat, and tears of so many who made this one of the nation’s premier men’s basketball programs? Who could we entrust with that legacy? Who could we trust with Virginia men’s basketball?”

Odom stood out among all the candidates. That was no surprise to Tony Shaver, for whom Odom played point guard at Division III Hampden-Sydney College.

Being Dave Odom’s son was a “little bit of a burden that Ryan had to live up to as a player and maybe in his later years as a coach,” Shaver said, “but he’s lived up to that in every way, that’s for sure, and he’s become his own man.

“For him to be so successful as a coach himself, Ryan Odom, is really impressive. How many guys in the last [decade] have taken three different Division I teams to NCAA tournaments? That’s just a very rare quality and commodity.”

Odom met with UVA’s players Saturday, and they worked out for the new coaching staff Monday afternoon in the men’s practice gym at JPJ. How many will stay at Virginia has yet to be determined.

In the transfer portal era, players routinely change schools, and UVA’s returning players “have to figure out what’s best for them,” Odom said. “These guys understand there’s no judgment from us, and we want what’s best for each of them, whether that’s staying here or finding a new opportunity. That’s part of transitions, and we understand that. But our job is to continue to every day come in here and chip away.”

Most of his VCU staff is joining him at Virginia, Odom said, but his associate head coach will be Griff Aldrich, a former H-SC teammate who has a degree from UVA’s School of Law. Aldrich, who was also on Odom’s staff at UMBC, spent the past seven seasons as head coach at Longwood University.

Mike Curtis, a UVA alum who returned to his alma mater since the spring of 2009, will continue as the program’s strength and conditioning coach. Odom said to expect other additions to the staff “that we’ll continue to announce at some point.”

The crowd at JPJ for the press conference included such former UVA players as Ralph Sampson, Jeff Jones, Wally Walker, Barry Parkhill, Jim Miller, Ricky Stokes and Sean Singletary. Also in attendance were Holland’s widow, Ann, and Odom’s brother, Lane.

“More than anything, Coach Holland allowed me and the others to be part of something so special,” Odom said. “We used to sit on Ralph’s knee. I used to sit on the sideline during practice with Jeff Jones as a little kid and dribble between my legs, and he would talk to me.”

Jones, who succeeded Holland as UVA’s head coach, was at JPJ on Monday, as was Shaver. Odom spent two seasons (2001-03) as an assistant on Jones’ staff at American University.

“He was a coach’s son,” Jones said. “He knew the game. He thought the game. He was a hard worker. He was very competitive. He was a natural.”

As a boy, Odom saw the Cavaliers come together with a shared purpose. “Their goal was to win championships,” he said. “Their goal was to make a Final Four. Their goal was to hopefully push and one day win a national championship. And it’s happened here at UVA.”

He’s well-versed in the program’s history and appreciates the qualities that make the University unique.

“This place is about values,” Odom said. “This place is about growth. This place is about education and doing it the right way. That’s not going to change.”

Odom said he’s learned that “the people” are the key to success. “It’s about the people that you put together. Once it’s settled, you go to work. That part of it is not much different from place to place. How you put the team together, how you cultivate the team, how you get them to connect with one another, how you get them to become a unit, it’s core values.

“It’s celebrate, tolerate. That’s something we do after every game. That’s how you build your culture. You celebrate all the things that you know lead to winning. It’s not complicated. You don’t tolerate anything that leads to losing. That’s the message every single day that we come in.”

Odom said he’s confident UVA will recruit well, both from the high school ranks and in the transfer portal. The University has many selling points, he noted, among them JPJ, one of the nation’s finest arenas.

“If you look at it, every place that we’ve been, we haven’t had this,” Odom said. “We haven’t been able to recruit to the academics here and the chance for a kid to come here and get one of the best educations that exists and be trained by professionals there on that side.

“Then obviously the facilities here speak for [themselves]. The infrastructure in place is top-notch. So Virginia deserves the best. So what we’re going to try to do every single day that we come in here as a staff is try to push our guys to be their best.”

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