Virginia hires VCU coach Ryan Odom, whose father was a Cavaliers assistant

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — Virginia athletic director Carla Williams is hoping the obvious choice was the right one.

Williams named VCU coach Ryan Odom — whose father was a Cavaliers assistant and who handed the program its most historic and crushing defeat in the 2018 NCAA Tournament — as the full-time replacement to Tony Bennett on Saturday.

Odom’s season ended Thursday with a first-round NCAA Tournament loss to BYU. The Rams are the third team he’s taken into March Madness, leading UMBC and Utah State there in his previous coaching stops.

At UMBC, he made college basketball history, with Virginia on the wrong end of it. Odom’s Retrievers became the first No. 16-seed to upset a 1-seed when they routed the heavily favored Cavaliers 74-54 in 2018.

Seven years later, Odom is being tasked with getting Virginia — which recovered to win the 2019 national championship — back into contention for No. 1 seeds.

Bennett stunningly retired just three weeks before the start of the 2024-25 season. He went 364-136 in 15 years leading the Cavaliers, guiding them to 10 NCAA Tournaments.

His longtime assistant, Ron Sanchez, was named interim coach. Sanchez went 15-17 this year — the first time the Cavaliers have finished with a losing record since 2009-10, Bennett’s first season leading the program.

Williams announced she would not retain Sanchez just hours after the Cavaliers’ season ended with an ACC Tournament loss to Georgia Tech — and speculation immediately turned to Odom.

The 50-year-old Odom wasn’t the only name Williams considered as she focused her search on current head coaches, including New Mexico’s Richard Pitino and Grand Canyon’s Bryce Drew.

But he was, from the start, the favorite for the post in Charlottesville, where he spent much of his childhood, serving as a Cavaliers ball boy and riding his bicycle to University Hall to attend practices after his school day finished.

His father was a Virginia assistant from 1982-1989, when Ryan was in third through 10th grade. The elder Odom helped the Cavaliers reach five NCAA Tournaments, including its 1984 run to the Final Four.

His son became a national name after the UMBC upset of Virginia, and one of the hottest up-and-coming coaches in the game. He went 97-60 with the Retrievers.

Being born in North Carolina and playing his college basketball at Hampden-Sydney, outside of Richmond, Odom surprised many when he went west and took the Utah State job in 2021.

Odom went 44-25 in two seasons with the Aggies, leading them to the NIT and then the NCAA Tournament.

He made his move back east in 2023 when he took over at VCU. In his first season in Richmond, Odom led the Rams to a 24-14 mark and a spot in the NIT. This year, VCU went 28-7 and won the Atlantic 10 championship, putting Odom into March Madness yet again.

His team fell in the first round, 80-71, to BYU on Thursday, and by Friday, his deal at Virginia was all but complete.

Odom takes over a Virginia program that has not won an NCAA Tournament game since defeating Texas Tech in Minneapolis in 2019 for the national title.

His own postseason record, since the monumental UVA upset in 2018, is similarly unremarkable.

He’s 0-2 in the NCAA Tournament and 2-2 in the NIT.

Virginia will formally introduce Odom at a news conference Monday at John Paul Jones Arena.

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Virginia Commonwealth head coach Ryan Odom swings the net after cutting it down after winning an NCAA college basketball game in the championship of the Atlantic 10 tournament against George Mason, Sunday, March 16, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)

Virginia Commonwealth head coach Ryan Odom swings the net after cutting it down after winning an NCAA college basketball game in the championship of the Atlantic 10 tournament against George Mason, Sunday, March 16, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)

Virginia Commonwealth head coach Ryan Odom reacts during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game in the championship of the Atlantic 10 tournament against George Mason, Sunday, March 16, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)

A Ukrainian drone strike killed one person and wounded three others in the Russian city of Voronezh, local officials said Sunday. Meanwhile, thousands of residents were still without power in Kyiv, following an intense Russian bombardment.

A young woman died overnight in a hospital intensive care unit after debris from a drone fell on a house during the attack on Saturday, Voronezh regional Gov. Alexander Gusev said on Telegram.

Three other people were wounded and more than 10 apartment buildings, private houses and a high school were damaged, he said, adding that air defenses shot down 17 drones over Voronezh. The city is home to just over 1 million people and lies some 250 kilometers (155 miles) from the Ukrainian border.

Ukraine's General Staff said Sunday said its forces hit three drilling platforms operated by Russian oil giant Lukoil in the waters of the Caspian Sea. Ukraine’s long-range drone strikes on Russian energy sites aim to deprive Moscow of the oil export revenue it needs to pursue its full-scale invasion.

The attacks came after Russia bombarded Ukraine with hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles overnight into Friday, killing at least four people in the capital Kyiv, according to Ukrainian officials. For only the second time in the nearly four-year war, Russia used a powerful new hypersonic missile that struck western Ukraine in a clear warning to Kyiv and NATO.

Ukraine’s largest private energy supplier, DTEK, said Sunday that 30,000 people in Kyiv were still without power following the attack. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said Friday around half the apartment buildings — nearly 6,000 — in snowy Kyiv were left without heat in daytime temperatures of about minus 8 degrees Celsius (17.6 Fahrenheit).

The intense barrage and the launch of the nuclear-capable Oreshnik missile followed reports of major progress in talks between Ukraine and its allies on how to defend the country from further aggression by Moscow if a U.S.-led peace deal is struck.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday in his nightly address that Ukrainian negotiators “continue to communicate with the American side.”

Chief negotiator Rustem Umerov was in contact with U.S. partners on Saturday, he said.

Separately, Ukraine’s General Staff said Russia targeted Ukraine with 154 drones overnight into Sunday and 125 were shot down.

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s main intelligence directorate said Sunday that Russia this month deployed the new jet-powered “Geran-5” strike drone against Ukraine for the first time. The Geran is a Russian variant of the Iranian-designed Shahed.

According to the directorate, the drone can carry a 90-kilogram (200-pound) warhead and has a range of nearly 1,000 kilometers (620 miles).

Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

This photo provided by the Ukrainian Security Service on Friday, Jan. 9, 2026, shows a fragment believed to be a part of a Russian Oreshnik intermediate range hypersonic ballistic missile that hit the Lviv region. (Ukrainian Security Service via AP)

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, second left, listens to British Defense Secretary John Healey during their meeting in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Danylo Antoniuk)