Virginia has apparently found its new head basketball coach in a crazy sense of irony.
The Cavaliers have reportedly hired VCU head coach Ryan Odom, who seven years ago was on the UMBC sidelines when they became the first 16-seed to ever beat a No. 1 team in March Madness. That team was Virginia.
The Cavaliers entered that 2018 contest as 20.5-point favorites, but the final score was the exact opposite; the Retreivers throttled Virginia, 74-54, after blowing them out in the second half.
Odom did not have similar magic this March, as his No. 11 VCU squad fell to sixth-seeded BYU in the first round of this year’s tournament.
The 50-year-old lasted at UMBC until 2021 when he went off to Utah State; he joined VCU ahead of the 2023 campaign, and is now set to man the Cavaliers, according to CBS Sports.
Ron Sanchez took over as the team’s interim head coach after Tony Bennett’s sudden retirement in October, just weeks before the season started. Bennett was quick to point the finger at NIL, saying he was “no longer the best coach to lead this program in the current environment.”
If you’re going to do it, you’ve got to be all in. You have to give everything. If you do it half-hearted. It’s not fair to the university and those young men. That’s what made me step away,” Bennett said at his retirement press conference.
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“I think it’s right for student athletes to receive revenue, but the game in college athletics is not in a healthy spot. It’s not. And there needs to be change. It’s not going to go back. I think I was equipped to do the job here the old way — that’s who I am, and that’s how it was — and my staff has buoyed me along to get to this point, but there needs to be change. It’s going to be closer to a professional model.
“Will I miss the game? Do I love the game? Absolutely,” he added. “But I don’t think I’m equipped in this new way to coach, and it’s a disservice if you keep doing that. I’m very sure that this is the right step. I wish I could’ve gone longer. I really do. But it was time.”
Bennett and his Cavaliers came back with a vengeance after being upset by Odom (now Bennett’s successor) and UMBC, though, running the table to win it all the next year. Recent years, though, have not been kind to Virginia; they were upset as a No. 4 seed in 2021 and 2023 and failed to get out of the First Four last year. In 2022, they were in the NIT, and they failed to make the tournament this year.
Odom went 52-21 with VCU and owns a lifetime 222-127 record. His father, Dave, served as a Virginia assistant in the 1980s.
Fairleigh Dickinson joined UMBC five years later, defeating Purdue; the other 158 1 vs. 16 matchups have gone the favorites’ way.
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