Many around the college basketball world were surprised when Tony Bennett suddenly announced his retirement back in October. What followed was something of a lost season for the Cavaliers, who struggled to a 15-17 mark in a down year for the ACC. However, an old foe comes to Charlottesville with the hopes of turning this program back into a national contender.
The highlight of Ryan Odom’s coaching career came when he led 16-seed UMBC to that historic upset over Virginia during the 2018 NCAA Tournament. Since then he’s taken both Utah State and VCU to the Big Dance and further established himself as a coach on the rise. Now he gets his first crack as a power conference head coach two decades after his father’s career came to an end down at South Carolina.
Virginia cut down the nets as national champions just six years ago and have four regular season ACC titles in the last decade alone, but Odom is building this thing as his own. In this transfer portal era, it’s not a surprise to see virtually all of the talent and imprint from Bennett’s tenure already gone from the program. Fortunately, Odom and his new staff have landed some nice talent both on the recruiting trail and from that portal.
A few notable faces down the foray with the highlight being former San Francisco shooting guard Malik Thomas. The WCC’s leading scorer should become one of the best shooters in the ACC and certainly isn’t the only boon in this new backcourt. Jacari White and Sam Lewis put up great production at North Dakota State and Toledo respectively and will also carve out minutes in this lineup.
Carving out the frontcourt is a little trickier, though 4-star recruit Silas Barksdale and former Kansas State big man Ugonna Onyenso are both excellent additions to the program. Other notable transfer additions include Devin Tillis out of UC Irvine and former BYU guard Dallin Hall.
When you take a step back and look at these pieces as a whole, there probably isn’t the talent here to win the ACC. Bennett’s teams weren’t always the shiniest on paper and Odom’s first squad won’t have those heightened expectations either. He’s built a reputation over this last decade and has built something special at each of his first three D1 head coaching stops. It’s a solid start for these Cavaliers, but will that start lead somewhere notable?