Virginia’s future belongs to ‘the silent assassin’

Ryan Odom stands close to the wall. Khakis. A V-Sabre quarter-zip. He is a khaki-and-quarter-zip guy this time of year, more of a joggers-and-sweatshirt guy come basketball season. In this video, Odom begins, after a second, to speak. What he’s saying is not the important part.

The important part is what is behind him. Odom is in the head coach’s office. The wall behind him is unchanged since Tony Bennett’s tenure, still with that large image from the 2019 national championship. And below the image? Five words. The five pillars, the last one visible over Odom’s right shoulder. Over his left shoulder is blank space.

It might soon get filled in.

Odom has six of them. He calls them core values, not pillars. He has lugged the words to all his head coaching stops, with five of them the same as Virginia’s previous regime’s — humility, unity, passion, servanthood, thankfulness — and one of them different. Accountability.

Those six core values have existed since Odom’s head coaching career started at Lenoir-Rhyne in 2015, and they have stayed with him since, from UMBC to Utah State to VCU. Now they will inhabit Virginia, as the new head coach takes root this offseason and his personality infuses the basketball program.

The core values materialize on the first slide of every recruiting pitch he makes and are central to his program, according to Billy Bales, who played under Odom at Lenoir-Rhyne and has coached with him everywhere since his final season at UMBC.

“Coach always said, when he became a head coach, that was really important to him,” Bales said. “Like, ‘We’re going to have core values, we’re going to have words, and we’re going to spend time on those words.’”

Many programs also employ groupings of words, even put them on the walls. But Noah Ralby, a member of Odom’s staff at UMBC and Utah State, says it’s not necessarily the same in Odom’s case.

“I know a lot of people who listen to podcasts,” Ralby said. “They talk about it. Not all of them are about it. He’s really about it.”

Keenan Palmore knew that from the first visit, could tell this was someone who meant what he said. Back in 2015, Palmore, looking for transfer destinations after his junior year at Old Dominion, took a visit to see the new head coach at Division II Lenoir-Rhyne. He could tell pretty quickly that this was a guy he wanted to play for.

The thing Palmore remembers most from that season? The aftermath of one game in particular, a big win. But he cannot remember which game it actually was. It might have been the Bears’ first-round NCAA Tournament game, in which No. 7 seed Lenoir-Rhyne upset No. 2 seed King (TN), 83-79.

The team, in the locker room, waited for their coach. Then there he came, running in, jumping up and down, and everyone was screaming, and water bottles were spraying, and they were all dancing around.

“He was, just as we were, jumping up and down, screaming, yelling,” Palmore said. “He loves it. That was a great moment.”

It was also unusual. Odom is more reserved, people around his programs say. He tends not to yell except when necessary, and he is eminently approachable, always with an open door, ready to hear any suggestion. He is “very calm,” according to Bales, with a “laid-back mentality.”

He is also a fiery competitor. And so Tony Shaver, Odom’s college coach at Division III Hampden-Sydney, has a name for him — “The Silent Assassin.”

“He looks very calm, and his demeanor on the sideline is that way,” Shaver said. “But inside there’s a fierce competitive fire burning, and that's what people don't see sometimes.”

This past season, Odom’s VCU squad traveled to George Washington in early February for another important road game in an Atlantic 10 schedule packed with big matchups. The conference slate had entered its back half. At stake was a regular-season title, and this game, like all the others, meant a lot.

VCU came out flat. Stumbling. It committed four turnovers in its first four possessions. At the first timeout, Odom’s players clustered around him. He ripped into them.

“He was very aggressive, got after them, lit a fire under them,” Bales said. “And the guys responded.”

VCU came back and won the game, 80-72.

“He knows just how to push the right buttons,” Bales said.

That is one thing about him, his judgment. The other is his consistency. People use the same words to describe him, just about everywhere he has coached, and he has done the same things, just about everywhere.

People say these things about Odom. Then they come true. Take, for example, something Palmore said in conversation with what Odom did on his first day in Charlottesville.

“[Odom] approaches people who are there when he joins a new program, and then he gets to know the people that are still there, that were already there before,” Palmore said. “He leans on a lot of people that have been in that environment already, how they do things and the culture there.”

Odom and his staff ran a practice with Virginia’s roster from last season the day of his introductory press conference. Present at the practice? Kyle Guy, Isaiah Wilkins and Chase Coleman, all members of the previous staff.

Take, for another example, something Ralby said in conversation with a point Odom made early in his introductory press conference.

“Virginia has been a really storied program,” Ralby said. “And what Virginia does going forward, a lot of it has to do with the people that came before [Odom]. That's [the kind of thing] he talked a lot about.”

Ralby said this a few hours after the press conference, having not listened to or read any of the press conference material. In the press conference, though, Odom’s introduction last week to his new school, he said basically the same exact thing.

“This place has existed long before Ryan Odom,” Odom said. “This place has existed before Tony Bennett.”

The place will enter its new era in the fall. Just with one more word on the wall.

Virginia’s future belongs to ‘the silent assassin’

Ryan Odom’s “core values” have remained the same at his four previous head coaching stops

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