Virginia hires coach who led improbable 16-vs-1 upset over Cavaliers

Virginia hired Ryan Odom, who once led Maryland-Baltimore County to one of the NCAA men’s tournament’s greatest upsets, as its new basketball coach, the school announced Saturday.

Odom spent the last two seasons at Virginia Commonwealth University, posting a 52-21 record and a berth in the NCAA Tournament this year. The Rams lost to Brigham Young 80-71 in the first round on Thursday.

The 50-year-old Odom replaces Tony Bennett, who retired in October, just weeks before the season. Ron Sanchez was named the interim coach and led the Cavaliers to a 15-17 record, missing the postseason, and it was announced he would not be retained as the next coach.

Odom, whose father Dave was a head coach at South Carolina, Wake Forest, and East Carolina and was an assistant at Virginia in the 1980s, has also coached at Charlotte and Utah State.

His highest-profile success was with UMBC, when the 16-seeded Retrievers upset No. 1-seed Virginia in the first round of the 2018 tournament, the first that had occurred since tournament expansion in 1985.

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