The Waiting Game: Virginia's Top HC Candidates Coaching in March Madness

Matt Newton | Mar 17, 2025

Geoff Burke-Imagn Images

For just the second time in the last decade, Virginia did not quality for the NCAA Tournament. Instead of preparing for March Madness, the Cavaliers are "in limbo", which is describing UVA's current state of affairs as mildly as possible. Carla Williams announced just hours after UVA fell to Georgia Tech in the ACC Tournament that interim head coach Ron Sanchez would not be retained, which means that most of Tony Bennett's old staff is likely done at Virginia as well. As for the players, the expectation is that many of them will enter the transfer portal, though the timely hiring of a new head coach could keep some in Charlottesville.

The transfer portal window officially opens on March 24th. Carla Williams and Virginia's search committee will do its best to have a coach hired before that date, but it seems they will have to wait at least a little bit longer. Of the list of candidates we currently have compiled on our Virginia Basketball Coaching Search HQ, which of course is headlined by the presumptive frontrunner candidate Ryan Odom of VCU, seven of those eight candidates are currently coaching teams that will play in the NCAA Tournament.

That list also includes some idealistic choices like Marquette's Shaka Smart or Vanderbilt's Mark Byington, coaches who probably will not leave their respective positions for UVA, but who nonetheless have ties to either the Commonwealth of Virginia (Smart) or the UVA basketball program specifically (Byington). But Smart and Byington are also coaching NCAA Tournament teams, as are many of the other names mentioned for the Virginia job like Ben McCollum (Drake) and Richard Pitino (New Mexico). So, it's a waiting game for the Cavaliers.

Going back to Odom for a moment, since he has been the leading outside candidate to succeed Tony Bennett basically since his retirement back in October, the VCU head coach has been mentioned in the mix for the vacancies at NC State and Villanova in addition to Virginia. The Wolfpack are likely headed in a different direction, possibly nabbing another former VCU coach in McNeese's Will Wade, but it could very well come down to a battle between Virginia and Villanova for the Ryan Odom sweepstakes.

Of course, both teams will have to wait for Odom to finish coaching the Rams on their postseason run. VCU just won the Atlantic 10 to secure an automatic bid and earned a No. 11 seed in the NCAA Tournament. Odom has now coached three different programs to the NCAA Tournament (UMBC, Utah State, VCU), each time reaching the Big Dance in his second season at the school. The Rams will take on No. 6 seed BYU in the first round on Thursday at 4:05pm ET (TNT) at Ball Arena in Denver, Colorado.

Odom has been coaching in the Commonwealth of Virginia for the last two seasons and famously triumphed over the Cavaliers with UMBC in 2018, but his ties to the UVA men's basketball program run much deeper than that. His father, Dave Odom, served as an assistant on Terry Holland's staff at Virginia for eight seasons and Ryan Odom served as a ball boy at University Hall. Additionally, current UVA assistant coach Orlando Vandross worked with Odom at UNC-Charlotte from 2011-2015, which could create a potential retention opportunity for Vandross to stick around at Virginia if Odom is indeed hired.

The combination of connections to the program and the Commonwealth along with his success at three different programs has many people convinced that Ryan Odom will be the next head coach of the UVA men's basketball program. Virginia Cavaliers On SI writer William Smythe wrote extensively on Ryan Odom's background, coaching resume, and the positives and negatives of his case for the UVA job here: UVA Basketball Coach Search: Is Ryan Odom the Frontrunner?

Click here to see our Virginia Basketball Coaching Search HQ with the latest news regarding the top candidates to fill UVA's head coach vacancy and the most recent updates with the college basketball coaching carousel.

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