Jerry Ratcliffe claims to have “sources” within the UVA Basketball program who told him that Kyle Guy and Isaiah Wilkins “were offered to remain in similar roles that they held under Tony Bennett and Ron Sanchez, but both declined.”
Here we go.
What Jerry is doing here is running interference for one “source,” not “sources,” to take the heat off Ryan Odom, who we’re told from on high has “unjustly received criticism for not electing to keep the former Cavaliers on his staff.”
ICYMI
- Odom’s first flub as the UVA Basketball coach: Not retaining Kyle Guy
- UVA Basketball: Isaiah Wilkins, double-‘Hoo, not retained by Odom, moving on
This is what Jerry does.
Somebody wants to plant a story, they know who to go to.
I mean, who can forget Anthony Poindexter, who is still the safeties coach at Penn State, despite all the coaches who were supposedly blowing up his phone and willing to take pay cuts to work with him at UVA.
Dex didn’t get the job, but it wasn’t for lack of trying to manipulate the story, which is what is going on here with the Guy-Wilkins matter.
Just to say, I have “sources” who tell me that Guy and Wilkins weren’t “offered to remain in similar roles,” which is why they’re leaving.
The reason they weren’t more up front about being passed over is obvious: they want to get another job somewhere else, and so you’ve got to play the game, which means, you go out with grace.
Who’s not exhibiting “grace” in this situation is a certain high-placed source, and I know who it is, and I don’t like that I know who it is, throwing our guys under the bus.
Look, I get it, that Ryan Odom should be able to hire whoever the hell he wants to hire on his staff, and if he doesn’t want Kyle Guy, Isaiah Wilkins, Chase Coleman, Jason Williford, so be it.
I think it’s a mistake, and I’m not afraid to say so, one key reason there being, from what I’m hearing, some of the Tony Bennett-era hoops alums are wondering if the new regime is going to push them out, the way we heard UVA Football alums felt pushed aside by the Bronco Mendenhall administration.
So, I point out what I see as a mistake, a huge mistake, a huge political mistake, because we want the alums on our side here; and then, behind the scenes, I find myself facing a full-court press trying to get me to see things Odom’s way.
I don’t respond in the expected way, so now, we get this public rebuke, with a planted story throwing Guy and Wilkins under the bus.
Just to be clear, this nonsense isn’t going to make the story go away, which, I think we can all agree, it just does need to go away.
So, there’s that.
And then for me, the effect here is to take the bloom off the Ryan Odom hiring rose.
I think he’s taking for granted that people are going to look at him as being a UVA lifer because he was here with his dad 35 years ago.
A lot of fans and alums are already raising issue with me with how quickly Odom has been working to distance the UVA Basketball program from the Tony Bennett era, like there was something wrong with how Bennett led the program to six ACC regular-season titles, two ACC Tournament titles and a national title.
My inbox is full of emails from fans and alums who are saying, the way the people in charge are handling this transition, it’s like they’re going out of their way to make Tony look bad, that’s it, they’ve had it, they’re done.
The pushback on this story is an indication to me that the inner circle doesn’t care about the subset of fans and alums who don’t like how the transition is being handled, which, that’s their issue to deal with.
The big-money people are obviously on board, and if Odom comes out the gate a winner next fall and winter, the fans who are on the fence will come around, I expect.
I like what Ryan Odom is doing on the recruiting trail; I don’t like that he seems to think he’s taking over for Pete Gillen or Dave Leitao, and not the guy who cut down nets in a football stadium on a Monday night in April.
He could learn from the grace exhibited by Guy and Wilkins in their goodbye notes.
So could Jerry’s “source.”
For that audience of one: plant stories to make me look bad; doesn’t bother me.
All you’re doing is validating what I’m saying.
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Chris Graham
