Aldrich Pumped To Be Back on Grounds

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

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — As a University of Virginia School of Law student, Griff Aldrich often could be found playing hoops at North Grounds Recreation Center when he wasn’t in class or studying.

Another spot he frequented was University Hall, then the home of Cavalier basketball. Aldrich and his law school buddies typically would enter the arena after UVA men’s games had started, with a definite plan of attack.

“We would never sit in the student section,” Aldrich recalled, smiling. “At that time, it wasn’t packed, and so we just meandered down to great seats. I remember it was so awesome getting to see ACC basketball up close.”

After seven seasons as head coach at Longwood University in Farmville, Aldrich is about to have an even better view of ACC hoops. He returned to Grounds last month to become UVA’s associate head coach. His boss is his former Hampden-Sydney College teammate Ryan Odom, who was named Virginia’s head coach on March 23.

Aldrich, who grew up in Virginia Beach and attended Norfolk Academy, spent two years on Odom’s staff at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County before leaving in 2018 to take charge of the program at Longwood.

“I always felt that my time with Griff was cut short at UMBC,” Odom said at his introductory press conference at John Paul Jones Arena. “This place means so much to him as well, and I’m excited that we get to do it again together as friends.”

Aldrich had opportunities to leave Longwood for other Division I head jobs. Each time, though, he and his wife, Julie, decided it “never like it was the right time or the right place, or a mixture of both,” Aldrich said. “And we loved our time in Farmville. I loved Longwood.”

The chance to return to Charlottesville and be reunited with Odom, however, was one Aldrich decided he couldn’t turn down.

“One of the great joys in life is getting to watch one of your best friends and see them thriving,” Aldrich said. “I don’t grade easily, but just to watch Ryan and see how brilliant of a coach he is was really fun, and I’ve obviously gotten to watch from afar over the past seven years since we’ve been apart.

“He and I had always flirted with the idea [of working together again], but I never really thought I would do it, because I’d be leaving a head job to be an assistant. But Virginia is different, and as I told him, this was probably the only job I would have left for, and he’s the only coach I would have left to join.”

Aldrich and his wife have three children, the oldest of whom is getting close to high school. “It felt like, for our family, if we’re going to make a move, this is the time and Virginia is probably the only place and Ryan’s probably the only person,” Aldrich said.

“This is a world-class institution, and it’s an unbelievable combination of world-class academics and high-class college athletics. To me, institutional fit is huge, and the University of Virginia is such a great institutional fit for Ryan’s ethos and his value system, and certainly mine as well.”

Aldrich, who as a boy attended UVA head coach Terry Holland’s basketball camp, has fond memories of his first stint in Charlottesville. He enrolled in law school in 1996 and graduated three years later. Along the way, he lived at Ivy Gardens Apartments and in a house near Barracks Road.

“We used to go to Big Jim’s all the time,” Aldrich said, referring to a much-loved barbecue restaurant in Charlottesville that has since closed.

As a student, he found law school to be “a little bit of a culture shock,” Aldrich said, “just going straight from undergrad to grad school. I think I still probably had one foot in kind of an undergrad mindset and one foot in a grad mindset, but I really loved my time at Virginia, and it was really exciting to be around such engaged people, such brilliant minds.”

He smiled. “That was probably the first time I was around people where I was like, ‘Oh, wow, his horses are running a lot faster than mine mentally.’ ”

Aldrich remembers attending a Five-Star basketball camp as a boy and seeing future UVA star Cory Alexander play. “And it was the first time in my life that I said, ‘I don’t care if I live in the gym, I will never be as good as he is.’ And law school was a little bit like that: ‘I don’t care how much I study. I will never be as smart as some of these people.’ But I really had a great time, had a great experience.”

Since returning to UVA, Aldrich said, he’s heard from several of his former law school classmates and professors. “And so I’m looking forward to connecting with old friends.”

In addition to playing pickup games at North Grounds and in intramural leagues with a law school team, Aldrich coached junior-varsity boys basketball at the nearby Covenant School for two years. Those close to Aldrich knew his passion for basketball, and so they weren’t shocked when, after earning his degree from UVA in 1999, he returned to Hampden-Sydney to join the staff of his college coach, Tony Shaver.

In 1999-2000, H-SC finished 26-2, solidifying its status as a power in the NCAA’s Division III. Aldrich could have remained on Shaver’s staff but opted, for several reasons, to put his law degree to use.

“At that point,” Aldrich recalled, “I think I had about $40,000 of law school debt, which doesn’t sound like much, but back in 2000, it felt like a mountain I couldn’t climb, especially when I was making $24,000 [at H-SC]. I was literally paying the minimum amount [on his school loan]. I think the interest was actually adding to the principal. And so I got some advice from a mentor who said, ‘You should at least go try the law, and you can always come back to coach.’ ”

Aldrich joined Vinson & Elkins, a prestigious law firm for which he worked in Houston and London. He later established a private oil and gas company in Texas and also worked for an investment firm. Aldrich’s love for basketball never waned, however, and he stayed active in the sport. He coached high school players on an AAU team in Houston and later founded a faith-based AAU program in that city.

Elsewhere, his friend Odom was climbing the coaching ranks.  After graduating from H-SC in 1996, Odom had worked as an administrative assistant at South Florida before serving as an assistant coach at Furman, UNC Asheville, American, Virginia Tech and Charlotte, where he finished the 2014-15 season as interim head coach.

Odom spent the 2015-16 season as head coach at Lenoir-Rhyne University in North Carolina. In March 2016, UMBC hired Odom, who asked Aldrich to join him in Baltimore. Aldrich served as the Retrievers’ director of operations and also oversaw recruiting and program development.

“He had run big companies and been very successful,” Odom told the Virginian-Pilot’s Ed Miller in 2019. “I felt like he could help organize our program, and he certainly did.”

In his second season with the Retrievers, Aldrich was on the bench for a historic event. In Charlotte, N.C., UMBC became the first No. 16 seed to knock off a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament. Its opponent that night, of course, was Virginia.

“It was surreal,” Aldrich said.

Not long after that game, Aldrich took on a new challenge. Despite his lack of coaching experience, Longwood hired him to run its program. “To say I was out-of-the-box hire is very generous,” Aldrich said.

“He didn’t have the training that I had along the way,” Odom said. “ I was fortunate enough to watch a lot of other people do it [before becoming a head coach]. He had two years. Think about that. Two years, and then he had to take over a program. That’s pretty scary, if you think about it. I know I would have been scared.”

Aldrich was unfazed. He posted a 127-100 overall record with Longwood, which advanced to the NCAA tournament twice during his tenure.

“The fact that [the Lancers] were able to win like they did was really incredible,” Odom said. “So there was no question that, if I was able, if this door was opened for me, that I was going to ask him to come.”

After five seasons at UMBC, Odom left for Utah State University, where he compiled a 44-25 record. Then came two seasons at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.

Odom’s first team at VCU won 24 games and advanced to the NIT quarterfinals. The Rams won the Atlantic 10 tournament this season and finished 28-7 after falling in the NCAA tournament’s first round.

“I think the sign of any great coach or any great professional is somebody who’s always growing and learning,” Aldrich said, “and Ryan’s evolved in so many different ways as a coach.

“I always really loved analytics, and that’s something that I naturally gravitated to. Ryan was certainly really intrigued by analytics back at UMBC and really started to grow in that, and now that’s a central part of his thinking and his philosophy and how he shapes his program.”

In general, Aldrich said, “I would say the level of sophistication [in Odom’s coaching] is significantly greater now than it was at UMBC. I think I’ve seen that both in his approach to how he looks at the game, but then also, and I’ve seen this from afar, just the complexity of his offenses and defenses. I would say we were relatively basic at the time, at UMBC, from an X’s and O’s perspective. It was really good stuff, but now it’s much more, I would say, sophisticated.”

As the Wahoos build their 2025-26 roster, they’re navigating the transfer portal and making decisions on Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) compensation every day. Aldrich’s background in law and business has made him well-suited to assist Odom in those areas, and he’s acting not only as associate head coach but as the program’s de facto general manager.

“Right now I’m probably wearing two hats,” Aldrich said during an interview in his JPJ office Tuesday. “In fact, I was just on the phone talking about caps and the amounts and all of that, and that’s a lot of fun, trying to be able to figure those things out. Where does this work and how does that?

“And so I’m trying to be able to support Ryan in that role, and the reality is we’re all learning new things. But the type of law I did was more deal work, where you’re structuring deals and figuring out how this can work, how this makes sense. There’s a lot of that that’s going on right now, no doubt, and I feel comfortable doing that.”

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