New Virginia basketball coach Ryan Odom talked about a long to-do list when he took over the program in March. That included building a roster, moving into high school recruiting, meeting supporters, and much more. Now that June has arrived, though, one of the most important to do’s on that list is finally almost here: working with his new roster of Cavaliers.
While some players arrived in Charlottesville already, the full roster as currently known is expected in town on Monday, June 16. That’s the date when the University’s Session II for summer classes and the start of workouts begin. Players can participate in 8 weeks of weight training, skill instruction, and development while enrolled in summer school for up to 8 hours per week in total with 4 hours of that allotted to skill instruction.
This will be a critical time for the Hoos. Odom and his staff are new and so is most of the roster. Only Elijah Gertrude remains among the scholarship players from the 2024-2025 roster. UVA has not yet officially announced its incoming transfers - the delay is though to be to announce the whole group at once - but Dallin Hall (BYU), Sam Lewis (Toledo), Jacari White (North Dakota State), Ugonna Onyenso (Kansas State), Devin Tillis (UC Irvine), Martin Carrerre (VCU), and Malik Thomas (San Francisco) all have been reported as pickups for the Hoos. Chance Mallory (St. Anne’s-Belfield), Silas Barksdale (Woodside), and Johann Grünloh (Germany) also have landed with UVA from high school and Europe, respectively. Virginia is believed to be the favorite for Thijs De Ridder (Belgium) as well pending eligibility clearance.
Odom recently joined the Field Of 68 Podcast with Rob Dauster and discussed his early weeks on the job. The full interview is embedded below. Odom shared some thoughts on how the first steps for this summer, including fostering connections between the team.
“My plan is not to change a ton of things, coach how I’ve always coached, and be able to tweak things as we go,” Odom said. “What matters most is how competitive is the group going to be. We have to train them to be very competitive, to compete to win, and compete together.”
Odom also discussed what the upcoming Virginia basketball era may look like in terms of style of play. Odom spent previous head coaching stops at Lenoir-Rhyne (Division II), UMBC, Utah State, and VCU. The Hoos likely will be much more aggressive in transition and shoot more 3-pointers offensively alongside a more pressure-oriented style defensively.
For example on offense, the Rams ranked No. 21 nationally last season in 3-point volume (47.8% of their total field goal attempts were 3’s) and 107th in field goal attempts per game (59.4), while UVA ranked No. 87 in 3-point volume (42.8%) and 360th in field goal attempts per game (51.8). Defensively, VCU ranked No. 33 in steals rate (12.0% for steals per possession) and Virginia ranked No. 244 (8.7%).
“I think it will be very similar to what we did at VCU, quite honestly,” Odom said. “I think there’s similarities to every stop and it’s looked a little bit different at every stop for me. UMBC, we did pressure up fullcourt the year that we made the NCAA Tournament and other years. A lot of it will be figured out as we get together. You go in with OK, this group, this player has this makeup and you put the pieces together, but for us it’s aggressive in transition. Certainly, we’re going to search for great 3’s in transition and high quality offense putting pressure on the defense. We want to be on the attack. But we’ve got to be able to execute in the halfcourt as well.
“Defensively, we want to be stingy and we want to be balanced and have great defensive transition,” Odom added. “We certainly want to pick up in the fullcourt and we’re going to try to train our guys to do that this year as well. We’ll kind of see how that goes. Do we have the makeup to be able to do that? Do we have the depth to be able to do that? We think so, on paper, but we’re going to have to show it in practice and prove that we can do it to then earn the right to be able to do it in the game.”
The full Field Of 68 interview is available here:
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