Personally, I donât like the current state of college basketball, but it is what it is. Recognizing that, I think that Coach Odom did more than we should have expected so far. We may get a Top 75 recruit; we may not. This year doesnât concern me nearly as much as the 2027 class. Having said all that, when we start seeing multi-year NIL contracts, then we may start to see the system stabilize a bit.
My counter to this would be that not much was going to be different on the HS recruiting end anyway because he still has to prove himself. Much better to try to be as good as possible as quickly as possible rather than trying for a slow ramp up. Even if they donât perform on the court this season, he can still lean on the continuity excuse and ask for some time to get things going. But, more likely, theyâll be pretty good which will kick start everything else.
I donât see much downside in building the way he has as the alternative was likely just a slower ramp up to getting things where he wants them longer term.
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I think the road not taken was more multi-year transfers. And/or more focus on retention of our high upside younger guys.
That said, there is a much higher chance of retention of one or both of TDR and GrĂźnloh than I thought a couple months ago.
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I would say the risk is that you lose almost all of your top talent next season, which, if you want to be successful next year, you have to replace with other top end talent.
The trap coaches can fall into is that they never want to have a down year, so then you keep trying for one year mercenaries. But the money you have each year wonât look like it does in year one, so it canât support that model as well.
As long as Odom is comfortable taking a step back at some point in service of longer term roster building and development, weâll be good. Still to be seen.
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In one of Coach Odomâs interviews, he addressed this issue. He stated that the long term goal will be to recruit four year players, but he acknowledged that there will be those who stay fewer years. He said that the program will continue to take transfers to fill in the gaps. He also said that recruiting foreign players will be part of his roster management strategy.
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I think the downside is we are just pretty good, get like a 9-seed or lower, lose in the first round, the cap is fairly hard, we have high turnover (lose both G and TDR), the young guys donât pop, etc. in that scenario, you lose some goodwill vs the slower build model.
How likely is that downside? Id say it is unlikely but a material risk.
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The slow build has just as many risks, especially in the era of unrestricted transfers. All recruiting is a crapshoot, but things are even riskier now. Sometimes unproven high school recruits produce and sometimes they donât, regardless of the number of stars next to their name. Until we see multi-year agreements, there is no guarantee that the developmental player sitting on the end of the bench wonât leave in search of playing time. Thereâs no guarantee that someone in the primary rotation wonât be lured away by more money. There is a real lack of stability throughout college basketball. For now, itâs a case of âpick your poisonâ, and Coach Odomâs approach, IMO, is as good as any, for the moment.
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This is a good discussion, gang. One thing that I will contribute to it is that, according to comments that Iâve seen from several recruiting gurus, this yearâs HS class is a down year talent-wise. If that is true, then Iâm not too worried about getting a sizeable HS class unless they are clearly talented enough to put us back in the national picture again. Iâm remembering one year (I think it was 2019 +/- ) that the gurus called that senior HS class a down year and Notre Dame had 4 or 5 top 100 guys in their recruiting class that year. That group never did anything to bring ND out of the doldrums.
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To be clear, my comment is less a criticism and more an acknowledgement of trade-offs. I agree with his approach whole heartedly.
The only better alternative in my eyes is for him to have had a team of underclassmen who could play at this level who he could take with him, but thatâs obviously not possible. Iâd much rather him swing kinda big this year and then live or die off that, at least weâll know where we stand. And since this was a financially driven period and we seemed to have a nice advantage, Iâd rather him throw that cash at someone more proven than try and get some sophomores who flashed. (this is sort of my argument for why we should have parted ways with Elliott before this year. Throw a bunch of cash at a new guy to make a splash and establish something before the rev share cap comes into play.)
I like this team a lot. He built a very modern basketball team with a lot of exciting players, and frankly I think really landed on his feet after some of his transfer recruiting whiffs. I think I like what we got better than Falsev-Davidson-Arc team core that they seemed to have honed in on before things really got started (and I would have been perfectly fine with that one).
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I think the downside of this risk is less than having a really uninspiring team of young guys who transferred in and then transfer right back out after a 15-17 win season and then fans check out after a âyear 0â
We could end up in a bad spot and lose everyone, but we could end up in that spot with a bunch of young guys too. At least this way we can plan for it a little more and are hopefully better along the way.
It just means that this is year 1 for him not year 0, but I think the staff understands that.
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The combo of Malik waiver + international approvals wound up giving us a Sweet 16 shot
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I tend to think this way too. Different circumstances (duh - not trying to re-litigate the Sanchez era), but we kinda just saw this movie with the 2024-25 season and it wasnât great!
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How much goodwill do you really lose in this scenario, though? Making the tournament and past the play-in round is already basically on par with anything the program has done since the Natty (lower seed, maybe) - considerably better than the past two seasons.
If anything, even though I think the ceiling on this team is higher, that probably reinforces the idea that spending on the roster can build on that momentum as heâd have done it in his first year coaching for us.
Iâd definitely argue that not making the tournament by playing it slower will lose you more good will in drawing talent who are less likely to want to be patient and whose only view of your track record at UVa will not be returning immediate results.
I donât see more multi-year transfers as any less risky for similar reasons.
To me, the absolute riskiest approach for Odom would have been to start slow - and see very little upside in embracing a strategy more likely to go in that direction. Create a program with more multi-year guys as the longer term strategy, sure⌠but the need to invest in a big way in the portal isnât going away any time soon and you want the tools to demonstrate why you have the program on the right track ASAP⌠IMO.
If the team is bad or misses the tournament this year - that will always drive risk. Better, IMO, to give yourself the best possible chance to be good as soon as you can.
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Iâm mostly with you. I think the key part of the potential downside is if we do have a hard-ish cap and we tied up our pre-cap money in guys that only had one year (to anticipate the counter: I know stuff is year to year, but itâs much easier to keep a guy who saw some success than to attract a new guy, IMO).
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The more patient build argument, which is basically just not targeting as many Seniors in the portal and prioritizing more multi-year guys requires all of this:
Some existence of a sorted, hard rev share cap, implemented with no work arounds or ways to effectively leverage other forms of NIL (pretty unlikely, given the struggle to regulate NIL so far and the ambiguity around sponsorships).
Strong confidence that the product would be better next year with those guys playing together a full year vs. just the talent gelling together this year and then being able to replicate something similar at least one more season, though with ostensibly fewer holes to fill next year and a season in the books showing Odomâs coaching here. Given the talent we did land with no proof of concept, thatâs a hard sell - given a world where most power 5 schools are capped to spend roughly the same - much better for us if weâve actually shown Odom to field a formidable ACC school already.
Strong confidence that we would actually retain most if not all of those multi-year guys. If they showed enough on the court this season, thatâs far from a guarantee.
The premise the donors are likely to immediately sour on giving to Odom if he doesnât produce results with this first year squad after they spent on it - I donât think thatâs even that likely. Sure, they wonât be thrilled if we arenât a tournament team, I bet, but they really want this team to be good and some grace will surely be given to apply lessons learned from this class and to pivot. Iâm very skeptical in the ability to keep donor money from getting to athletes via either direct NIL or through sponsorships, one way or another, nor the ability to regulate that communication from happening.
And then, that all of those points above not only need to be accurate, but outweigh the drawback and optics of his splash onto the scene with the program and not being very good immediately because theyâre trying to be patient; which would probably delay or curtail the appeal of upcoming HS recruits and portal seniors who want to win in their last season.
Idk, I think the argument requires some suspension of disbelief and also a lot of assumptions (that seam unrealistic given how things have gone). Itâs putting the cart before the horse, in many ways, advocating more for an established ideal program end-state rather than the beginning stages of a ramp up.
Compared to the much simpler, âtry to start winning as much as you can as soon as you can and everything else will fall into place more easily from there no matter what may come.â Iâd adopt that strategy, as Odom has, every single time given the choice.
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I do think he will get a lot of leeway for this first year if he isnât immediately successful. If that happens it will likely present as a âwhole new team, never gelled rightâ issues which I think people will be sympathetic to. I think one of these complete turnover teams will have a lot of success soon, but doing so would be beating the historical odds which I hope people realize. I just hope that the people who realize it are recruits/Chance/Silas/X/whichever Euros stick around.
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My question is, when did it become broadly believed that first year coaches canât get good recruits and have to prove themselves on the court first?
I seem to generally recall folks usually expecting a recruiting bump if anything in new coachesâ first year as they sell a new exciting vision and lots of playing time to recruits and come in expending max effort on the trail. I donât have any data to say whether that was in fact what commonly happened, but it was often discussed. Now everybodyâs suddenly like âWell he couldnât possibly land good recruits his first season - heâs new! They have to see it on the court.â
To me personally it just feels like an excuse. I think Odom has done well on the transfer market and think he may be setting things up really well, but at the same time, yeah, I would have expected a little more from him on the high school recruiting front thus far. Thereâs plenty of time to land nice pieces though and all will likely be fine (and hopefully great), but I think itâs a tiny bit concerning.
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Just saw Burlington School play a soccer game - right before my rec team at same field. Talented.
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Does it have to be true? No.
I think it is true in many cases and appears to be the case now in actuality for us. Main point being, that element really isnât impacted much by his current approach to the portal - especially because he did portal in so many one-year guys - if anything the âpatientâ method should create less of a clear path toward playing time for HS guys. There arenât many blockers on the roster as it stands.
Plus, the optics of the programâs playstyle over the past 15 years coupled with the loss of CTB probably does result in a âprove itâ mentality more than many situations both that things are truly different and that Odomâs brand will translate.
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