I’m being told tonight that the search committee’s work is done, but no, that doesn’t meant we have a new UVA Basketball coach just yet.
The frustrating thing to the past five months for the committee is, hours upon hours of work have been put into the effort, and it’s still going to feel like a snap decision in the end.
So many variables, so many moving pieces, are at play here.
What I learned this evening is, there is a clear frontrunner, but because there isn’t even a handshake deal in place with that person, we have ourselves a final list of five – yes, five – candidates that have all been given thumbs-ups from the group.
The final call on who the committee presents to Carla Williams, the athletics director, I’ve been told, will be made by Wally Walker, the former UVA star, Stanford MBA and former long-time president and GM of the Seattle SuperSonics.
Walker has a solid list of candidates who got thumbs-ups from the committee to sort through.
Ryan Odom
Odom, 50, has a 219-126 record in 11 seasons as a head coach, and he has his VCU team at 25-6 with an NET ranking at 33 going into this week’s A-10 Tournament.
Odom literally grew up in the UVA Basketball program. His father, Dave, was an assistant on Terry Holland’s staff from 1982-1989 – Ryan was in elementary school, middle school and his first couple of years of high school in that stretch, and served as a ball boy for the UVA Basketball program.
He’s also the guy behind the darkest couple of hours in UVA Basketball history: he was the head coach of the UMBC team that pulled the historic 16-over-1 upset in the 2018 NCAA Tournament.
Pros: He’s won at three schools, he has UVA Basketball in his blood.
The knock: can he recruit to a school like Virginia?
I reported over the weekend that Odom was the leader in the clubhouse, and from what I was told this evening, that still stands.
Shaka Smart
Smart, 47, has a 367-178 record in 13 seasons, and has his Marquette team sitting at 22-9 with an NET ranking at 25 going into this week’s Big East Tournament.
My understanding is that an informal contact was made with Smart, and that there is mutual interest.
As of a couple of weeks ago, Smart seemed to be the frontrunner; that he isn’t now suggests to me that there is a sense from the committee that he may be a hard get.
Pros: the 2011 VCU Final Four run, his run at Marquette.
The knock: what happened at Texas?
This is just my read, now, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Williams could override the committee and make Smart her top priority.
Smart would be the splash hire, relative to the rest of the guys on this list, and ADs are forgiven for wanting to make the splash hire.
TJ Otzelberger
OK, I’ll eat this one. I wrote four weeks ago that Otzelberger was an emphatic “no” in terms of whether or not he was on the search committee list.
That was what I was told by a committee member at the time.
Now I’m being told, he’s not only on the list, he is one of the five to get a thumbs-up.
Otzelberger, 47, is 192-106 in nine seasons as a head coach, and has Iowa State at 23-8 with a NET ranking at 9 going into this week’s Big 12 Tournament.
Otzelberger took two South Dakota State teams to the NCAA Tournament, had two mediocre seasons at UNLV, then got the bump up to Iowa State, which he has led to NCAA Tournaments in each of his three full seasons, and they’re obviously going back this year.
Pros: dude can coach D – each of his four Iowa State teams have ranked in the Top 10 in defensive efficiency, per KenPom.
The knock: there’s reportedly a huge buyout at play with him.
Ben McCollum
The first-year Drake coach just entered our countdown over the weekend.
McCollum, 43, is already going dancing – Drake won the Missouri Valley Tournament over the weekend, and at 30-3, and projects as an 11 seed in Joe Lunardi’s latest bracketology.
The knock on him: just one year in D1, after a 16-year run at Northwest Missouri State, with 395 wins and four D2 national championships.
One other knock: whispers about him being a tad bit abrasive, and maybe not being a good fit with the culture at UVA because of that.
Bob Richey
Returning to our countdown is a blast from the past. Richey, 41, is 179-80 in eight seasons at Furman, with one of the wins being the 2023 NCAA Tournament first-round upset of a fourth-seeded Virginia team.
Just from that, I am impressed with his x’s and o’s coaching chops.
My gut tells me Wally Walker wants Ryan Odom, Carla Williams might want to start with Shaka Smart.
My heart is with Bob Richey.
I think he’s the most Tony Bennett-like guy in this group.
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Chris Graham
