Aaron Roussell, whose University of Richmond teams have played in the last three NCAA Tournaments, is the new women’s basketball coach at UVA, and when you look at the resume, it looks like another Ryan Odom situation.
Roussell, like Odom, got his start outside of D1, as an assistant at Minnesota State at the D2 level, then a stint as the head coach at the University of Chicago in D3.
He guided his teams to a 161-50 record and four NCAA Tournaments in his eight seasons at Chicago, before leaving in 2021 for D1 Bucknell, where he put up four 20-plus-win seasons and got two NCAA invites in his seven years.
Richmond, on Roussell’s watch, went 148-72 in his seven seasons at the helm, with a glittering 83-21 mark over the past three seasons, with two A-10 titles.
“We are excited to name Aaron Roussell as our new head women’s basketball coach,” Williams said in a statement from a UVA Athletics release issued on Tuesday. “Aaron is a proven winner who embodies the University’s values of integrity, leadership, academic excellence and student-athlete development. We look forward to welcoming Aaron, his wife Molly, and their three children to Grounds for a new era of Virginia Women’s Basketball.”
This marks the second time in two offseasons that UVA Athletics Director Carla Williams has found a new basketball coach an hour’s drive down I-64.
Roussell will succeed Amaka Agugua-Hamilton, who had just led Virginia to its first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2018, and its first Sweet 16 since 2000, but left under a cloud of suspicion, with reports that she had been under investigation for alleged mistreatment of staffers, and a pending player revolt.
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First-team All-ACC guard Kymora Johnson is the most prominent of the names in the transfer portal, joined by former four-star recruit Olivia McGhee and former LSU transfer Sa’Myah Smith, the team’s most productive big.
The hard part to the forced departure of Agugua-Hamilton, who was 70-58 in her four seasons at Virginia, is that the team not only had the surprise Sweet 16 appearance, but was ranked 19th in the final AP Top 25 of the 2025-2026 season – the first appearance in the final Top 25 poll of a season since way back in 2009.
“My family and I are beyond excited to lead the UVA Women’s Basketball program into a bright and prosperous future,” Roussell said, in a statement from the UVA Athletics press release. “We are well aware of the rich history and tradition of this program, and we look forward to putting the UVA program into the nation’s elite on a consistent basis. I would like to thank President Scott Beardsley, Carla Williams and her staff who have been amazing during this search. I am eager to get to work with them as we look to pack JPJ on our way to creating amazing memories with the UVA faithful.”
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Chris Graham
