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Last year, Virginia washed out the last remnants of Bennett Ball, as Ryan Odom, who loves to run, changed things for the better.
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Former coach Tony Bennett preferred to keep games around 5o points or lower, and then his teams would strangle at the end.
Generally speaking, this worked really well, but one team that flipped the script on Bennett was UMBC, in 2018.
You remember: Virginia was the #1 seed in the tournament, and UMBC didn’t just beat them, they annihilated them, winning 74-54. Interestingly, perhaps the two biggest upsets in college basketball history involved the Cavaliers, who lost them both: the UMBC game, and the even more shocking upset by Chaminade in 1982, 77-72. That team had Ralph Sampson, who was an incredible player.
And of course, the coach of that 2018 UMBC team was Ryan Odom, who has some history with UVA. His dad, Dave, was a Terry Holland assistant from 1982-1989.
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Odom was even a ballboy: “Every day, when school got out. Ryan would go back to the house, he’d change into his basketball clothes and would get on his bike, cross over the viaduct on Alderman Road and drive right onto the court,” the elder Odom told the Roanoke Times in 2011.
“He’d park the bike behind the bench, walk over and sit down next to [Jeff Jones] and they’d watch practice and dribble the ball between their legs. [Jeff] talked more about basketball with him than I did.”
Young Ryan was seven when the family moved to Charlottesville, and 12 when they moved down to Winston-Salem when his pops took the Wake Forest job.
In his own basketball journey, Odom played for former UNC walk-on Tony Shaver, who was an excellent coach at a lower level, much better than, say, Matt Doherty. He won 584 games at Hampden-Sidney and William & Mary, and taught Odom to love the running game.
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So not to be too rude, but the biggest influences on Virginia basketball today come from Wake…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/acc-preview-4-virginia-locked-150758105.html
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Publish date : 2026-07-13 15:07:00
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