It’s generally accepted that about 97% of the human population has experienced déjà vu. Yet, scientists still don’t struggle to pinpoint the mechanisms that cause this phenomenon or why some people, such as myself, fall into the other 3%. While I’ve never had that uncanny sense of familiarity, I know the feeling of trying on old clothes or visiting home during college and finding yourself unconsciously flicking on the turn signal when you drive past your old high school.
I’m not sure if VCU head coach Ryan Odom joins me in the 3%, – maybe someone should ask him – but now that he’s back on the East Coast, where he led UMBC to become the first-ever 16-seed to knock off a No. 1 in the NCAA Tournament, he may get a serious dose of déjà vu this March. If not, at least he could dig into the back of his closet to dust off that old Cinderella slipper and see if it still fits.
Odom is in his second year at VCU after a two-year stint at Utah State where he led the Aggies to the 2023 NCAA Tournament, falling in the Round of 64 to seventh-seeded Missouri. Since his historic moment back in 2018, Odom has yet to win another game in March Madness, an unlikely drought that his 21-5 Rams could bring to an end.
Like Odom (and Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life), VCU is no stranger to making a splash in the Big Dance. Already a consistent NCAA Tournament participant with short coaching stints from Jeff Capel and Anthony Grant, Shaka Smart led the 11th-seed Rams all the way to the Final Four in 2011, and to the Sweet 16 each of the next two years.
Whether it's SNL50 (great) or a reboot of Suits (not so much), we’re all either in search of or force-fed nostalgia, no matter how recent or seemingly insignificant. For college basketball fans, Odom making a March Madness run at VCU would be perfect. The only problem is that unlike the days when Shaka had the Rams nabbing a five-seed and Meghan Markle was just an actress, the Atlantic 10 is no longer a three or even a consistent two-bid league.
Despite their pristine record, the Rams are currently on the bubble. And despite ranking 33rd in the NET after a dominant 80-51 win over UMass on Wednesday night, according to ESPN’s Joe Lunardi, they are the first team out. So, if VCU wants to make a Cinderella run, it’ll start with winning the A10, and in the regular season, that could come down to this Saturday’s matchup with the first-place George Mason Patriots.
Can VCU punch its ticket to March Madness?
With two losses in A10 play, Saturday’s matchup with George Mason is massive for VCU, as it is for Tony Skinn’s Patriots as well, but you wouldn’t know that from the Rams’ performance on Wednesday. Max Shulga started 4-4 from three in the first half and finished 5-6 for 19 points, all from deep. VCU went 14-29 from beyond the arc, and held UMass to 0-10, a crucial differential that should pay off big against a defensive-minded George Mason team.
VCU is third in the country in three-point attempt differential, and unsurprisingly considering three is more than two, is first in the A10 in offensive rating. VCU has shot 245 more threes than its opponents while George Mason has attempted 147 fewer. Regardless of their defensive prowess, it will be incredibly difficult for the Patriots to keep pace in that matchup.
It’s not just Shulga who knocks down shots from beyond the arc, Odom’s veteran-laden roster is chalked full of shooters. While he only shoots 32.9% leading scorer Joe Bamisile averages 6.2 attempts a game. Five players average at least four three-point attempts a game for VCU, including sixth-year senior Jack Clark who is at his fourth different school and is nine of his last 13 from deep heading into Saturday.
Odom’s analytically charged offensive attack that prioritizes corner threes and floods the floor with versatile shooters isn’t the only reason that VCU shoots so many more threes than its opponents. The Rams are also a ridiculously disruptive and aggravating opponent.
Harkening back to Smart’s “havoc” full-court press in 2011, VCU loves to take the ball away. Odom’s group is a 95th-percentile offensive rebounding team, 95th percentile in opponent turnover rate, and 99th percentile in defensive rating, even better than George Mason, which has had its defensive reputation boosted by its slow pace of play and low-scoring results.
The Atlantic 10's only path to becoming a two-bid league is having whichever team loses on Saturday win the A10 tournament. The problem is that the Cinderella Search Committee, which put George Mason on its radar earlier this season, has a hard time envisioning this VCU team losing again.
Why the slipper may not fit the Rams
It can be a useful exercise to look at each one of a team’s losses to discern what goes wrong when that team loses. It’s simple enough to say that a team which lives by the three is therefore liable to die by the three, and in VCU’s case that is true. However, there is another chink in the armor of this potential March Madness darling, and it has to do with the Ram’s defensive aggressiveness.
On average, VCU commits nearly 18 personal fouls a game, which is a lot. It’s the third most in the A10 and that allows opponents to spend a lot of time at the free throw line. In VCU’s most recent loss, a 78-69 defeat at Saint Louis, the Rams committed 27 fouls and the Billikens went a combined 30-39 from the free throw line.
Opponents have a 37.4% free throw rate against VCU (23rd percentile), which is their free throws attempted as a percentage of their field goal attempts. In that loss, Saint Louis’s free throw rate was a staggering 90.7%. Across the Rams’s five losses, their opponent’s free throw rate is 52.7% which would rank 364th among the 365 D1 programs for the entire season.
When you’re the first head coach to ever knock off a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, you’re afforded the leeway to play the way you want, and for Ryan Odom, that’s very aggressive. However, if VCU gets the wrong officiating crew in the first round of the NCAA Tournament or even the A10 title game, Odom could spend the entire time watching free throws, which is even more boring than Tony Bennett’s pack-line defense, and like Bennett in 2018, he could get sent home unceremoniously as a big favorite.
Cinderella Search Committee Watchlist:
- George Mason (Jan 22)
- North Texas (Jan 30)
- Drake (February 5)
- New Mexico (February 13)
- VCU (February 20)