Now that UVA Basketball has a new head coach, my attention turns to, how does Ryan Odom do things differently from a behind-the-scenes perspective than Tony Bennett did?
What I’m trying to get at here: do we see UVA Athletics help Ryan by giving him a front office with a GM to take the lead on scouting, roster-building and NIL?
The short answer, based on what Odom said yesterday at his introductory presser: yes.
But I’m going to put an asterisk beside that yes.
“Obviously we’ll have to, not have to, but we will hire a general manager for our program,” Odom said, answering a question from a reporter at the presser on Monday asking him about the “general manager model” and “roster management.”
Reading between the lines, though, it sounded to me that Odom isn’t thinking GM in the mold of how UNC is building a front office around Jim Tanner, a former NBA agent who was tasked with hiring new scouting and analytics staff, and will manage the construction of the roster and negotiate NIL contracts.
From the rest of Odom’s long answer to the question at his Monday public presser, it sounds like his model is going to be along the lines of how college coaches have long run their programs – with the coach, in effect, serving as the head coach, GM and president of basketball operations, and his assistant coaches being on-court coaches with additional roles in scouting and roster construction.
“Obviously I’m going to lean heavily on our staff,” Odom said. “That’s the way we’ve always done it in terms of evaluation, character evaluation, what our needs are in that particular year. We have to sit in a room and go at it and figure out who’s available, what do we need, and then start to attack the recruiting. We’re playing at an elite level, a top 10 level. In order to compete with the best of the best, you have to recruit well.”
If I’m reading this right, it’s disappointing in that it’s a missed opportunity for UVA Basketball to get ahead of the curve in terms of talent evaluation, retention and acquisition.
UVA Athletics, from what we heard the AD, Carla Williams, say on the topic at the Monday presser, has the money on hand to build a fully functional front office whose full-time job, 365 days, 52 weeks a year, could be focused on scouting talent at the high-school and college levels, making evaluations on priorities in terms of recruiting, and setting the program up ahead of the opening of the NIL/transfer portal in the spring and the prep NLI deadline in the fall to be able to pounce on the top targets.
Doesn’t sound like we’re doing that.
We’re going to do it the way coaches have done things for decades.
Not sure who’s dropping the ball here, but it’s being dropped.
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Chris Graham
