Transcript
Let’s talk some UVA Basketball with the news of the season here. Chris Graham, Augusta Free Press. Yeah, the last time I talked with everybody here, it was about the coaching search. The coaching search is over now. Ryan Odom, most recently at VCU, is now the head coach. As you know. If you are watching this, you know that already.
Our reporting odyssey dating back to July of 2023, actually June of 2023, which began with us when Ron Sanchez gave up his head coaching job at Charlotte to take an assistant job at UVA, a couple hundred thousand dollar pay cut, which signaled to us here at AFP that something might not be right in the Tony Bennett system, maybe his days were numbered. We kind of figured that out in the spring of 2024. Fall of 2024 he did what we had expected and stepped down. We went through the interim season with Ron Sanchez, the last five months as a search was ongoing. We reported to you a list of finalists that included Ryan Odom, who emerged as one of the top two of those five early in the process, and then late in the process, we reported he was the number one target. And turns out, yep, he’s the coach.
ICYMI
So, I’m talking here on Tuesday, on Monday of this week, Ryan Odom met with the media at a public event at the John Paul Jones Arena, 350 people or so in attendance. I counted. I stood up at the top of the, not of the whole arena, but of the lower level there. There were only so many seats in the media section, and not one for me. So I, I looked up from, I looked from above, and I did some reporter things, like us counting the number of people there. And you know, 20 members of the media, you know, the 12 or 13 members of the basketball team, a few coaches visiting from VCU, and then VAF donors and lots of fans.
Actually, I was surprised by the number of fans who showed up on a Monday afternoon at three o’clock for a live event like that. I’m surprised and impressed with that the roll out there for Ryan Odom, who is a guy that is, you know, in one sense, you could say he was born for this job. His father, Dave Odom, was an assistant coach at UVA from 1982 to 1989 under Terry Holland, the first legendary UVA Basketball coach whose all-time wins record at the school was eclipsed just not too long ago by Tony Bennett, who now Ryan Odom is effectively replacing.
Ryan was in third grade when his dad took the job with Terry Holland and grew up as a ball boy within the UVA basketball program over at University Hall, which no longer exists. He was literally the poster boy for the summer camp brochure for a couple of years there, and now, all these many years later, Ryan Odom is back at UVA, and this is, this has got to be his dream job. I mean, let’s just say it. I know there are still some out there who are thinking that, boy, he’s going to just use this job to get a better job. A lot of us think there’s not a better job in America.
So, I’ve been doing some things, I’ve been having some fun with this the last few days, trying to get folks ready for this new Ryan Odom era of UVA Basketball. So I’ll go in reverse order, because on Sunday, that’s where I’ll end up, but on Sunday, I wrote a column where I went into great detail about the Ryan Odom style of basketball, his approach to basketball, trying to do a primer to get folks ready. And it’s going to, you know, obviously we won’t see this team play for seven months, because the season will start in early November, so a lot’s going to happen between now then. An entire baseball season will have come and gone by then. And I mean, Major League Baseball, college baseball as well, we’ll be two-thirds of the way through football season before we see this basketball team play its first game under Ryan Odom.
But yeah, I wanted to get folks ready, so I’ll go into the details of the numbers after I go into sort of what Ryan had to say about his approach to basketball.
The way I wrote the story that I wrote last night about this was, the lede: the new UVA Basketball coach introduced himself to the fan base that learned to go crazy for shot clock violations with three words they hadn’t heard in succession for 16 years. I love offense.
That’s what the coach said. It was one of the things he said yesterday. The heavens, I noted in the story, did not part as he said the words. He tempted fate, but he was not struck by a bolt of lightning from on high, he was inviting it, though quite clearly speaking sacrilege about offense in the House of the Patrons Saint of the Pack Line.
Another quote from Ryan, we certainly want to play fast in transition, and we want our guys to get out and run.
This Ryan Odom guy loves offense. He wants to play fast. He wants to run. You know, first perspective would be no way this works here.
So you know, I will point out a few things. The topic of 2018 did not come up in the presser yesterday. It will. The national media has made note of with the obvious, that Ryan Odom was the coach of UMBC in 2018, that 16 seed UMBC that beat the one seed UVA by 20 points in the first-ever 16-over-1 upset in NCAA Tournament history. We’re going to hear about that a lot, whether you want to or not, so I’m just prepping you. It’ll be a few months, but when you turn your TV on and watch this team play, you’re going to hear that, and you’re not going to like it, but you’re going to hear it.
He’s not overselling the want to play fast aspect to what he had to say yesterday. His last five teams, I looked this up, have averaged between 65.6 and 68.6 possessions per game. So basically, 66 to 69 possessions per game. The last five UVA teams have averaged between 59 and 61 possessions per game. So we’re talking, you know, seven to eight, nine more possessions per game that you’ll see from the home team. That’s seven or eight, more seven or eight or nine more times to score for the UVA team.
The I love offense line, his last five teams have averaged between 70 and 78.2 points per game. The last five UVA teams have averaged between 62.4 and 68.2 points per game. So yeah, you’re going to see more points scored. You’re going to see a faster pace of play.
ICYMI
It felt to me, and I was, again, I was up at the top of the lower level, kind of watching everybody’s reaction, in addition to, you know, hearing the words and seeing him on the big screen, since I took advantage of the fact that I didn’t have a seat in the media section, that’s what part of being Fringe Media is all about, it seemed like he was kind of recruiting, you know. And a seventh guy, we’ll talk about the transfer portal later in this podcast, but a seventh guy has entered the transfer portal now, six yesterday, today, a seventh guy, Jacob Cofie, entering the portal. All could, all or some could, come back, and we’ll see how that goes. But it seemed like what he had to say, you know, OK, so he was talking, and he would, he would look to his right when he talked about and where the basketball players were seated in the audience. He would look to his right when he talked about, I love offense. I love to play fast, almost like, OK. And he talked about when he played at Hampden-Sydney, and also was a coach in D2 at Lenoir-Rhyne, his first, his first full-time head coaching job 10 years ago.
It was like he was recruiting those guys. And of course, you know also, this went out live over ACC Network, it’s on YouTube, it’s on Facebook, and so, you know, recruiting other people, too. But he was talking first and foremost about, you know, I love offense, I love playing fast, I love my team to shoot threes, to his to the guys sitting there that he had just he told us put through a workout before, you know, earlier, earlier in the day, on Monday with Chase Coleman, Kyle Guy, Isaiah Wilkins, Mike Curtis. And so, yeah, you know what, if you if you liked, if you want, if you felt constrained at all by the Tony Bennett style play, if you want to, you know, play faster, if you want to have more freedom on offense, hang around with me, and you can do so.
As I mentioned, six of the now seven players, the addition, Jacob Cofie, who’s in the portal today, Dai Dai Ames, Isaac McNeely, Andrew Rohde from the backcourt, and from the frontcourt, Blake Buchanan, TJ Power, Anthony Robinson, and now Cofie entering the portal.
Odom indicated he will be talking one-on-one with those guys over the next week, and that one thing, he said, he’s already told the guys who are holdovers is that there’s no judgment. He said, if you put your name in the portal, this situation is what it is. They have to figure out what’s best for them. Odom said, we have to figure out, on our side, obviously, that they understand we have to figure out what’s best for UVA and this program going forward, my job is to communicate and find out, why did you choose Virginia? What did you like about this place? And ultimately, we’ll have to come to a decision. Do they want to stay? Do they want to find another situation? Either way, there are no hard feelings.
That’s Odom’s words. He noted that those meetings to him are a key focus in this first week. I mean, he’s got a lot of things to do. He wants to recruit the portal. He’s got to flesh out his staff. Talk about that here in a second. But, recruiting his players is a big part.
As far as the staff goes, he’s already formally named Griff Aldrich his associate head coach. Griff Aldrich was most recently the head coach at Longwood. Aldrich is a UVA Law grad who played college ball with Odom at Hampden-Sydney, a D3 school, under legendary coach Tony Shaver, a guy who likes to play fast.
ICYMI
Aldrich was in private practice as an attorney for 16 years after a one-year stint as a graduate assistant coach, he coached AAU ball during that time. He never really, you know, got away from basketball entirely. And then, when Odom got the job at UMBC, he actually went with him there as the director of basketball operations, a low-paying job. Gave up a law job, a lucrative law job, for a relatively low-paying basketball operations job. Then, after two years at UMBC, took another low-paying job as the head coach at Longwood, not making a lot of money there, but he was the head coach, and that’s what he wanted to do with his life.
So, he brings a the analytical perspective of a trained lawyer, a guy who worked in private practice for 16 years, and now he’ll be coming back to UVA, where he got his law degree to be the associate head coach. That’s a big jump.
Now I don’t know that this is formal yet as I’m talking, I don’t know it, I think it probably is, but during the press conference yesterday, Odom gave shout-outs to VCU assistant Darius Theus and two of his staffers, Bradford Burgess and Ahmad Thomas. I have to imagine that the fact that they were there and he gave them shout-outs is an indication that they’re going to be coming with him to Virginia in some capacity. I would imagine Theus obviously as an assistant, he’s coming from VCU as an assistant, and perhaps Burgess and Thomas moving up from the staff, the second bench to the first bench, more formal. You can have five full-time assistants, and perhaps, perhaps those guys have a shot at that, in addition to Aldrich. And then, you know, we’ll see, because he name dropped yesterday Chase Coleman, Kyle Guy, Isaiah Wilkins, maybe there’s opportunities there for guys to either be staffers or assistants. I have to see, you know nothing, nothing is in stone, as far as I know about that.
So, that’s sort of the word there.
Now I promised, and I’m going to follow through with this, you know, he talks about, Odom talked about, he likes to play fast, he likes offense. And so, you know, I think it’s good for me here to go into the the what UVA Basketball fans need to know about Ryan Odom from the style standpoint, the numbers and analytical standpoint.
ICYMI
I mentioned the faster pace of play. Virginia Commonwealth averaged five possessions more per game last year than UVA did. The first adjustment we need to make is, it’s going to be faster. VCU averaged 12.3 fast-break points per game last year. Virginia averaged 4.1, so you’re going to see his UVA team is going to take opportunities, they’re going to look for opportunities and take them to try to push pace from a fast-break perspective, Tony Bennett teams and Ron Sanchez, as last year’s interim coach, with the Tony Bennett philosophy, that’s not part of the game plan, that’s not part of the philosophy.
The willingness to run is going to help the recruiting. We already saw that, with all the guys in the transfer portal, we got a commitment on Saturday, literally hours after UVA formally announced Ryan Odom as the head coach, the word had started slipping out Friday, but Saturday, Chance Mallory, the nation’s number two-ranked point guard in the class of 2025, who happens to be a local kid from Charlottesville, plays at St. Anne’s-Belfield, he committed the UVA, after committing back in the fall and then decommitting when Tony Bennett stepped down.
Mallory is back in the fold, and he’s sort of the first guy, you know, with everybody else right now in the transfer portal, he’ll be the first guy on the roster for next year, and sort of the guy to build around, as far as that goes.
ICYMI
So, faster, I love offense. Odom talked about how his team should more threes. Last year, his VCU team shot 28.6 three-pointers a game, 22nd most nationally. There’s 364 teams in D1, so that’s top 7% nationally. Virginia shot 22.2, which ranked 203rd nationally. So, six and a half more attempts per game from three. It’s not all bombs away, though. His VCU team doesn’t just, I mean, 47.7% of their attempts from the field last year were threes, but they also averaged more attempts at the rim than the UVA team did last year, 16.8 shots at the rim from VCU last year, 26.2 shot attempts in the paint, Virginia averaged 13.8 shots at a rim and 22.5 per game in the paint. So, significant numbers there, too. From a percentage standpoint, you’re talking 20, 25% more attempts, you know, in the paint and at the rim, for the Ryan Odom style versus the Tony Bennett style, where the difference is, you know, so you’re shooting a lot more threes, a lot more shots from, you know, point blank, with the metrics, far fewer attempts, in fact, half the attempts from the midrange, those jumpers outside the lane, the inside the three point line, you know, contested 12-, 15-, 17-footers.
VCU hits the boards more, 13 offensive rebounds per game, less than seven per game for UVA. More second-chance points created because, and it’s not because Virginia teams weren’t tough with Tony Bennett, it was that the philosophy was, OK, we don’t want to fast-break ourselves to get ourselves out of position to play defense, and we don’t want to get ourselves out of position after we shoot the ball. So Tony’s teams were actually, the emphasis was, get four guys back. We’ll send one offensive rebounder, and then, if, you know, if it happens, you know, sometimes, you’d see two or three guys sometimes, but the philosophy was, one guy offensive rebounds, and then four guys dropped back, so, you know, to kind of play like a neutral-zone trap in hockey, almost. And so, you, if your emphasis is drop guys back, you’re not going to get as many opportunities for offensive rebounds. And certainly, Virginia didn’t get that.
The Odom approach is much more analytically sound. You get you get more shots of the rim, you get more three-point attempts, you get more offensive rebound kickouts, fewer shots from the midrange, 3.9 midrange jumpers per game for VCU last season, Virginia averaged nine.
A funny thing is, you know, you might think, all right, so they play faster, you know, they’re a little more risky with more fast breaks. If you fast break and something happens wrong, that opens up our opportunity for the other team to fast break. If you send more guys on the offensive boards, you don’t get the board, that can open up more opportunities for fast breaks. And so, you’re scoring more, but the other team is scoring more.
Gotcha. Last year, VCU actually gave up fewer points per game than Virginia did, 62.9 ranking 10th nationally, Virginia gave up 66.8. You kept hearing even, you know, even on ACC broadcasts this past season, you know, Virginia is still right near the top of the ACC in scoring defense. VCU was four points per game better last year than UVA was. So that tells you that even though VCU scored 76.9 per game. Virginia scored 64.8 per game, that, you know, opening yourself up, giving yourself more opportunities at easier baskets, either in transition or at the rim or open threes, doesn’t necessarily open you up to then giving up more opportunities for easy baskets.
Yeah, part of that is that, just like the Bennett system, you know, the Bennett system, the emphasis on defense was to help the offense in a different way, though. You know, Virginia’s defense under Tony Bennett wasn’t oriented towards creating live-ball turnovers, really turnovers of any kind. It was really just to make you work hard, miss a shot, then we clean the boards up and we get the ball back on offense. We’ll run more efficient halfcourt offense than you do most of the game, if not all. The game will be played in halfcourt offense, and we’ll just play it more efficiently and beat you.
The Ryan Odom system will work to create those live-ball turnovers. In fact, VCU got 16.2 points per game off turnovers last season, five more than UVA scored per game last season. VCU averaged 8.2 steals per game, which was a top 20 national number, Virginia averaged 5.5. VCU average 5.4 blocks a game, UVA 3.8. I mean, it might not sound like a lot in an individual game, three more steals, two more blocks, five more points off turnovers, five more points off second chances. But it all adds up.
And overall shot attempts per game is the one that really jumps out at me. I noticed this because, I mean, I kind of gave the indication earlier, we had the notion sometime back in December that Ryan Odom was going to be one of the top two candidates, and we started covering VCU more actively. If you paid attention to Augusta Free Press this basketball season, you noticed that we gave a lot of time and attention to the VCU, George Mason, the A-10 race, much more attention than we’ve ever given to the A-10. Deservedly so this year, it was a fun race. Those two teams ended up tying for first in the A-10 regular season, played a thrilling, A-10 Tournament championship game. VCU won by five, but it was a three-point game with a few seconds left, Mason missed an open three that would have tied it and sent it to overtime. Great race, great results between those teams, fun to watch two state teams.
We did all that attention because we were watching VCU, because we wanted, we knew that Odom was a guy that was getting a really serious look to be the perhaps the next head coach at Virginia, and we wanted to learn more about his approach. And one of the games that we covered in depth, VCU had something like 19 more shot attempts from the field than their opponent in that game, shot in the low- to mid-30s, and won by double digits because of the emphasis on offensive rebounds and forcing turnovers.
Over the course of the season, VCU averaged 5.1 more shot attempts per game than their opponents, so an average of five more shot attempts per game. Virginia, I didn’t know this intuitively, but Virginia averaged 2.3 fewer shot attempts per game than their opponents. It makes sense, though, you don’t emphasize turnovers, you want to make the other team miss shots, and you don’t emphasize offensive rebounds, so you’re not going to, you know, you’re not going to create more opportunities that way. You’re just going to try to maximize your opportunities and minimize the other team’s opportunities.
Well, the Ryan Odom approach is, get more shots, get more higher-percentage shots, more high-yield shots in terms of either threes or shots at the rim, and you don’t waste possessions on midrange jumpers. That is the Ryan Odom philosophy.
Now, an odd find inside the numbers. You know, I consulted so many different subscription services. KenPom actually had this one. It’s one that’s been sitting there looking at me for years. I just didn’t use it very much. Virginia’s defense, you know, Tony Bennett, the Pack Line defense, is known for making its opponents work to get shot. That’s the whole thing here. We’re gonna make you work hard. You’re eventually gonna wear down. Virginia actually had a slightly shorter time of possession on defense this past season, 18.6 seconds, to VCU, 18.8 seconds on defense. This season, VCU on the offensive end, ranked in the top 120 in time of possession on offense. So, they didn’t, you know, run the shot clock down like we’ve seen so many times over the years for Virginia, it was a point of emphasis. For VCU teams, we’ll get out there, we’ll take opportunities early in shot clocks, we’ll take some transitions, secondary breaks, that kind of thing. But on defense, we’re going to still make you work.
Another area where that translates out, I looked at CBB Analytics. I mean, I’m just had so much fun with this on Sunday when I was working this up, you can actually get a number of how many shot attempts per game with five seconds or less on the shot clock per team. Virginia averaged just under nine. VCU average right at five. So, four more shot attempts per game for UVA within the final five seconds. I mean, you know from watching UVA Basketball, so many of the shot clocks getting down in the final seconds, you’re rushing shots up towards the rim, those are not going to be the high-percentage shots.
You want fewer of those, if you can have fewer of those, if you need to have fewer of those. The Ryan Odom approach, it’s going to work that way.
So now, in terms of roster and rotation, there are some similarities between Odom Ball and Bennett Ball. Both go with a base three-guard lineup this past year, VCU went with a starting backcourt of three guards, a six-zero point guard, Zeb Jackson, and two off-guards, Joe Bamisile and Max Shulga, both in the six-four, six-five range. So, kind of thinking, and think about Virginia with a six-one guy in Dai Dai Ames, who actually was more of a shooting guard. They tried him at point guard for too long this season. He’s not a point guard, he’s a six-one shooting guard. But then the other two guards, six-four, Isaac McNeely, six-six Andrew Rohde, so, very similar from an appearance standpoint, right?
This year’s VCU team had a six-ten Jack Clark playing the four. And this is a difference with Odom, he likes a stretch-four, he likes a big guy who can play the four position who can shoot threes. Jack Clark this past season, 34.8% from three and averaged 4.0 attempts per game from three. That’s a good number for a guard, much less for a six-ten power forward. His 2022-2023 team at Utah State had a six-nine stretch-four, a guy named Taylor Funk, who shot 37.0 from three and averaged 6.4 attempts from three per game. So, I mean, I’m thinking like a guy like Elijah Saunders, who shot 37% from three for Virginia this year, but really it was, sort of, it was not by design. You know, in the Bennett system, the mover/blocker offense, the predominant base offense, the fours and the fives are setting screens. If you get anything, it’s off of a pop and, you know, the Odom system might actually run some run some actions to get a guy like Elijah Saunders some looks from three.
So, we’ll see. Saunders, his name is, actually, I don’t think his name is in a portal yet, as I’m talking, so he could have put it in since I started recording this podcast, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him put his name in the portal, just because, hey, you’re going to maximize your value that way, OK. I still like the idea, I mean, you’ve got Chance Mallory coming in, the number-two point guard in the country didn’t choose you over Tennessee to come in and sit. I like him to come in and start. He’s a five-eleven guy. You know, Isaac McNeely and Andrew Rohde are in the portal, we’ll see. I mean, I’m not hearing anything authoritative, telling me about what their thought process is, or thought processes, because it’s not an individual thing. They’re not a collective. They’re going to go their own routes, I’m sure. But I’d love to see them both back. I think both those guys could fit in in this, in this Virginia system. I’d like, I’d love McNeely, who was in the top 10 in the country in terms of three-point shots per game, I’d love to see him playing a more free-flowing offense, like Ryan Odom’s offense. I think Rohde’s probably more a backup, a backup of point guard, kind of like I envision playing the role that Ty Jerome plays now for the Cleveland Cavaliers, second-unit point guard, gives you 20 minutes a game, in the college game, you can sometimes play as part of your death lineup to finish a game out, but lead your second unit, and leads them well and gives you a change-up from the speedier guy in Mallory to the, you know, more cerebral approach of Rohde. I think that’d be great.
And then, you know, Jacob Cofie put his name in the portal. I’d love to, love to see Cofie back with his skill set, and see if he can improve under the new coaching staff. Love to see Saunders back. But you know, if it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out.
I think there’s a lot that those guys could get for from, you know, staying around for one more year, especially the fact that McNeely, Rohde and Saunders are all juniors, so they’re one year away from eligibility-slash-graduation. You know, why pack up and move towards the end of your career in that way, if you don’t have to? I mean, I understand, from their perspective, if the playing opportunities are better somewhere else and or the NIL money, probably more important, especially because none of those three are necessarily NBA guys, this is probably the year of their life that they’ll make the most money. So I can see that if you get a NIL offer that is too good to turn up, you got to take it. This is your your last chance to really make good money in sports. I think that’s certainly something to keep in mind for those guys.
I don’t know, that kind of covers a lot, right? Covered the, let’s see. I covered the Ryan Odom press conference yesterday. I talked about the potential with the coaches. I talked about the transfer portal guys. Talked about Chance Mallory. Man, this, you know, kind of caught you up.
You know, as we wrap up here, this is, this is a weird time for me. I feel like we’ve been chasing this down, I kind of mentioned at the beginning of this podcast that, you know, we’ve been chasing this down since I was at a Nats baseball game, a Nats-Phillies game, and I will actually be going this weekend to see the Nats and Phillies in DC. It’s gonna be 82 degrees on Saturday, chance to see some cherry blossoms and whatnot, and get out of the house and, you know, for the first time in a while, go out and enjoy the, you know, some baseball and some great weather. But I was at a Nats-Phillies game in 2023 when I got a phone call news tip, hey, it’s you know, the job at that point to what I’ve been told, Kyle Getter had left the UVA Basketball coaching staff of Tony Bennett to take a job at Notre Dame under their new coach, Micah Shrewsbury. That left an open position on Tony Bennett’s staff, and the word had gotten to me that was down to former Notre Dame assistant Anthony Solomon, who’s a UVA grad, and Ron Sanchez, who was, you know, the head coach of Charlotte, just won 22 games that year. So, when Sanchez got the job, the thoughts already in my head, I’m there at a baseball game in the left-field bleachers, and I’m already starting to think, I mean, he didn’t, Sanchez didn’t give up a head coaching job making more money to come back for no reason. There has to be a reason. I mean, at that point, there’s, there’s no smoking gun. It’s just there’s, you know, something here to piece together.
And you know, the 2023-2024 season had an interesting feel. You know, Scott German wrote a column after an early ACC season, like, you know, early, mid-January, ugly loss at NC State. You know, he was reading Tony Bennett’s body language. I called Scott crazy, yeah, because his column was, Tony, looks like he’s checked out. Scott, you’re crazy, basically, I said. I ran the column, but Scott, you crazy. Season plays out, I mean, it played out the way it did. You know, Virginia got into the First Four, got blown out in the First Four. We now know we didn’t know then, obviously, at the time, but we now know that right after the season ended in March of 2024 that Tony Bennett was very seriously considering stepping down.
Around this time is when the word started getting out, hey, maybe Tony’s contract is coming up. I did a public-records request and found out that, indeed, there were only two years left on the deal. There were apparently no contract extensions on the table, because I asked for that and was not given that. And so then, you know, did another public-records request and found out that Ron Sanchez had a longer contract than even Tony did. That’s when the ball really started rolling. So, what we had thought the summer before kind of led us to, OK, it looks like there’s a succession plan in place. UVA then threw us a curveball and announced that Tony had signed an extension, a five-year extension, in June, that would keep him there through 2031, but we were hearing, and I reported in the summer and into the early fall, that Tony had, sort of, you know, taken one more of a CEO role with the program, that he was letting the assistant coaches, Ron Sanchez and Jason Williford, his two senior assistant coaches, lead, you know, the program in lots of ways. You know, lead the offseason workout program, you know, start leading the practices in October. And then on Oct. 18, we got the word, actually, it was Oct. 17 that the word came down, that Tony was stepping down. Oct. 18, it was formalized with a press conference.
And then, you know, the work wasn’t done then, from our perspective, you know, we started reporting on the search committee process. Our first published report was Dec. 28 so about two months after the surprise, shock resignation of Tony Bennett, and we’ve been hard at it ever since.
And now, you know, it’s kind of like the old thing about the dog barking at the car and the car, you know, the car is always going down the road when you’re barking at it, now, there’s one now that has stopped, what we do now. I don’t, I don’t know what we do now. We got our coach, got Ryan Odom. You know, I’m a little disappointed to say the least that Virginia didn’t take advantage of the situation and go ahead and roll out a whole new way of doing things, with having a formalized front office in place with a formal general manager, not just, I mean, Ryan Odom talked yesterday about hiring a general manager, but it feels like he’s going to be hiring more of a director of basketball operations than UVA is hiring a general manager to work side by side with him, and so it feels like an opportunity lost, but we’ll, you know, we’ll keep, I guess that’s part of my job now.
I love the hire. I think it’s a great hire. I can’t imagine that they would have gotten a better candidate for this job, a guy who’s a UVA grew up, literally in UVA Basketball. You couldn’t do a better job than what Carla Williams did – Carla Williams, Wally Walker, Barry Parkhill, Jim Ryan, the whole group, I mean, they did an incredible job getting the getting a guy that I feel like is very much the right guy. I wish they had gone one more step with, you know, doing the Moneyball approach that I’ve been suggesting the last few weeks. They didn’t, that’s fine, but that gives me something to do, because I’m going to still keep on them in the meantime.
Video: Welcome new UVA Basketball coach Ryan Odom
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Chris Graham
