The VCU takeover of the UVA Basketball program is nearly complete, with Ryan Odom adding four more members of his Rams staff to his new staff on Grounds.
Ahmad Thomas will be the recruiting director, after working as Odom’s player-development coordinator for the past two seasons.
Kelsey Knoche is the new director of operations; she was with Odom at VCU for two seasons, and at Utah State with Odom for his two-year run there.
Matt Hart is the director of analytics, after serving in that role for Odom for two years.
Last but not least, Billy Bales is the video coordinator; he’s been with Odom dating back to Odom’s days as the head coach at Lenoir-Rhyne, a D2 school.
These hires were announced on Tuesday, along with two holdovers from the Tony Bennett staff – Mike Curtis will continue as the strength and conditioning coach, and Ethan Saliba is back for his 43rd season with UVA Basketball, heading up the sports-medicine staff.
ICYMI
It would appear that there is at least one spot on the new Odom staff yet to be filled, that of a fifth full-time assistant.
Odom has named Griff Aldrich, most recently the head coach at Longwood, who worked with Odom at UMBC, as his associate head coach, and former VCU assistants Bryce Crawford, Matt Henry and Darius Theus will serve as assistants at UVA.
He can add a fifth full-time guy, and I can’t see a reason why he wouldn’t.
I’m still hoping to get a look at his formal appointment letter, which I assume would spell out his budget for staff, and also give us a better sense of how the head-coach position will interact with a general manager, which we’ve been told for a while now is in the works.
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Chris Graham
