UVA Basketball: We’ve got a lot of talent, but is there enough NBA talent?

I got all kinds of criticism from the UVA Basketball fan base over a column that I wrote back in May about Ryan Odom failing to address the biggest issue that plagued his first team, which of course won 30 games.

“It was plainly obvious,” I wrote in that May 3 column, “that Odom’s first team was out-talented in its two losses to Duke, the NCAA Tournament loss to Tennessee, the come-from-ahead loss in January at home to UNC.”

---

ICYMI

• UVA Basketball: Ryan Odom is not getting the job done as a general manager

---

Conceding that point yesterday in a midsummer chat with the media was: Ryan Odom.

“There are definitely some similarities in the games that we lost. I mean, each one of those teams had NBA guys on their roster that were pretty good, and they individually impacted the games that we lost in a pretty big way, and sometimes multiple guys,” Odom told reporters at the June 30 presser.

From what we know now, those NBA guys were:

• Duke: Cameron Boozer (first round, #3 overall), Isaiah Evans (second round, #33 overall), Malik Brown (second round, #44 overall)
• North Carolina: Caleb Wilson (first round, #4 overall), Henri Veesaar (second round, #52 overall)
• Tennessee: Nate Ament (first round, #13 overall, Ja’Kobi Gillespie (second round, #42 overall), Felix Okpara (second round, #46 overall)

The 2025-2026 Virginia roster had one draft pick: Ugonna Onyenso (second round, #53 overall).

In terms of guys on the ESPN Big Board for 2027:

• Duke: Dame Sarr (first round, #18), Patrick Ngongba II (first round, #28)
• Virginia: Sam Lewis (second round, #54)

The CBS Big Board for 2027 throws in:

• Cayden Boozer (Duke) at #55
• Johann Grunloh (Virginia) at #69
• Thijs de Ridder (Virginia) at #75

I whined in my column about Odom missing out in his portal pickups on the likes of Wisconsin guard John Blackwell, who landed at Duke; Virginia Tech guard Neoklis Avdalas and NC State guard Matt Able, both of whom are at North Carolina; and Kansas power forward Flory Bidunga, who is at Louisville

Where those guys are on the big boards:

• John Blackwell: #47 (CBS), #60 (ESPN)
• Neoklis Avdalas: #39 (CBS), #53 (ESPN)
• Matt Able: #45 (CBS), #16 (ESPN)
• Flory Bidunga: #54 (CBS), #47 (ESPN)