The college basketball universe is constantly changing and the A-10 is certainly evidence of that. It feels like just yesterday that this league was regularly putting several teams into the Big Dance, though the days of Temple and Xavier are long gone and it’s more of a challenge to compete in this league. As such, these teams feel added pressure to compete.
Two teams fired their head coaches and honestly both made really exciting hires. La Salle brought Darris Nichols to town after solid work down at Radford and you wonder what he’ll be able to accomplish with slightly better resources with the Explorers. Meanwhile, Fordham made a sneaky good move in snatching Mike Magpayo from UC Riverside, hiring a head coach on the rise with a phenomenal basketball background.
However, we’re looking today at Phil Martelli Jr., the former Bryant head coach hired to succeed Ryan Odom at VCU. His basketball life started under his father as a player at Saint Joseph’s back when things were very different in the A-10. Martelli’s career then started with several coaching stints, gaining experience at schools like Niagara, Delaware, and Bryant over the years.
It wasn’t until 2023 that Martelli’s head coaching career began, as he was promoted to the top job when Jared Grasso stepped aside after offcourt controversies. The results were sensational, as Martelli led the Bulldogs to a pair of 20-win seasons, including a trip to this most recent NCAA Tournament and the first America East title in program history.
VCU has spent the last two decades with rising head coaches building winning programs before leaving for bigger jobs. Whether or not Martelli is the next in that line, he fits the build of a coach on the rise. He’s familiar with the A-10, has a great basketball pedigree, and will have a significant uptick in resources available at VCU as compared to Bryant.
This isn’t about who we expect to be most successful in 2026. Martelli takes one of the best mid-major jobs in the country as what could be the next step in his meteoric rise. We’ll have to see how he handles the brighter lights of the A-10 in a league full of hungry programs, but there’s plenty of reason for excitement in Richmond.