On the evening of Monday, November 3rd, basketball will return to Charlottesville when the UVA men’s team tips off against Rider University. The Cavaliers are coming off of 12 months of upheaval and turbulence, but they appear poised to take on the NCAA and usher in a new era for Virginia’s program.
Just over a year ago, legendary head coach Tony Bennett abruptly announced his retirement from coaching basketball, weeks before the season was set to begin. Bennett, now 56, coached UVA basketball for 15 seasons and led the program to unprecedented success. Under his coaching, the team won its first and only national title in 2019, as well as six ACC regular-season championships, two conference tournament titles, and 10 total trips to the NCAA tournament. He explained that he did not feel equipped to coach in the current college basketball landscape, citing the prominence of NIL deals and the transfer portal: “The game and college athletics is not in a healthy spot. It’s not. And there needs to be change, and 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.”
Bennett made his announcement only weeks before the beginning of the season, leaving longtime assistant coach Ron Sanchez holding the reins. The season that followed was disappointing — UVA finished with its first losing record in more than a decade. Soon after the season ended, it was announced that Sanchez would not be retained as head coach. Almost the entire team entered the transfer portal, leaving the roster empty going into the offseason. At the same time, UVA Athletics announced the hire of Ryan Odom, then VCU head coach. Odom spent time around UVA basketball in his youth, as his father, Dave Odom, coached the team alongside the legendary Terry Holland in the 1980s. Much later, in 2018, Odom made history by being the first coach to lead a No. 16 seed to victory against a No. 1 seed in the first round of the NCAA Tournament when he coached UMBC against the Virginia Cavaliers. Now, serendipitously, he has returned to Charlottesville to coach the Cavaliers, like his father before him.
Odom has been hard at work over the last seven months building a robust roster for the upcoming season. He started strong by locking down a recommitment from Chance Mallory, a four-star guard straight out of high school from Charlottesville, who had initially committed to UVA, but decommitted after Coach Bennett announced his retirement. Odom spent the next several months filling out the roster, adding several exciting players, including seven from the transfer portal and two international players. Some of the Cavaliers’ most notable additions include Malik Thomas, a graduate shooting guard who was the the West Coast Conference’s leading scorer last season while playing at San Francisco, as well as two European NBA prospects: Thjis De Ridder, a 22-year-old freshman from Belgium who has played professionally in Europe for five years, and Johann Grünloh, a 19-year-old center from Germany who has played four years of professional ball.
As the season approaches, excitement for the Virginia Cavaliers Men’s Basketball is continuously building. UVA was ranked fifth out of 18 teams in the ACC preseason media poll. ESPN analyst Joe Lunardi predicts the Cavaliers will be one of the last four teams to make the NCAA Tournament. Meanwhile, CBS Sports analyst Matt Norlander sees the Cavaliers as a single-digit seed this March. Around Charlottesville, a city that has grown accustomed to the college basketball success of Tony Bennett’s 2010s, the air is once again filled with excitement. UVA’s season finally begins on Monday, November 3rd, at 7 p.m., live at the John Paul Jones Arena and streaming on ACCNX.
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