One coach who was a finalist in the UVA Basketball search landed his dream job. Another coach that national scribes insisted was connected to the Virginia search ended up with a random job in the Big East.
The latter, Richard Pitino, was not among the list of finalists at UVA, but the folks at ESPN.com and The Athletic keep telling us that he was, even as they’re reporting on his hire at Xavier, where Pitino will replace Sean Miller, who is headed to Texas.
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Pitino, now at Xavier, will be competing for Big East supremacy with his father, Rick Pitino, who just won the Big East regular-season and tournament titles at St. John’s, which got bounced out of the 2025 NCAA Tournament as a two seed over the weekend.
Richard Pitino, at New Mexico, made it to the second round as a 10 seed, where his team lost on Sunday to two seed Michigan State.
The guy who got his dream job, Ben McCollum, was actually a finalist in the Virginia search, but he was destined to end up at Iowa, where he will replace Fran McCaffery.
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McCollum has only been at the D1 level for a year, leading Drake to a 31-4 record, the Missouri Valley regular-season and tournament titles, and a first-round upset of six seed Missouri last week.
Before getting the job at Drake, McCollum coached for 15 years at Northwest Missouri State, where he won four D2 national titles.
McCollum, an Iowa City native, was a summer camper at Iowa hoops camps led by long-time Hawkeyes coach Dr. Tom Davis, who had a 270-139 record in 13 seasons at Iowa and later was the head coach for four seasons at Drake.
Ben McCollum getting the Iowa job is akin to Ryan Odom, a UVA Basketball summer camper whose father, Dave Odom, was an assistant coach at Virginia for seven years, getting the UVA job.
Richard Pitino getting the Xavier job is the guy hopscotching across the country in search of a chance to take another step up the ladder.
Which is why he was not on the radar of the Virginia search committee.
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Chris Graham
