South Carolina and Ryan Odom: How close was UMBC's coach to becoming a Gamecock?

On April 10, 2001, when Dave Odom was introduced as the 30th head coach in South Carolina basketball history, a potential Gamecocks assistant hugged him on the way to the podium.

Ryan Odom was 26 years old and already down his father’s career path, working on Jeff Jones’ staff at American University. He stopped in Columbia to see Dad take his new job. But how close was he to staying longer?

The younger Odom threw himself into the national spotlight last Friday when he guided a 16-seed to a first-ever win against a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. UMBC not only upset Virginia, it whipped the Cavaliers by 20 points in Charlotte.

Dave Odom and his wife, Lynn, watched proudly from inside the Spectrum Center.

“It was the best of the best,” Dave Odom said by phone Monday. “There was one of the great hugs of all time.”

Ryan Odom’s story has been well-documented. He’s a basketball lifer who credits his father, in charge of Wake Forest from 1989-2001 and USC from 2001-08, for sparking interest.

UMBC is the eighth stop of his career, second as head coach. He’s been an assistant at South Florida, Furman, UNC Asheville, American, Virginia Tech and Charlotte. He’s just never called Dad his boss.

“He and I talked about it many times,” Dave Odom told The State. “I just felt like he would be better served to let me help him from a distance. He gets enough from me. I thought it would be better for him to go elsewhere to get other experiences, other procedures, other ways of coaching, other ways of handling situations, different methods. I thought that was, in the long run, the right thing to do.”

Dave Odom’s first staff at South Carolina included Rick Duckett, Ernie Nestor and Barry Sanderson. Ryan Odom was only discussed.

“He wanted to come, and I wanted him to come, but we just resisted it,” Dave Odom said. “Didn’t do it.”

He instead worked under the likes of Jones and Seth Greenberg. Jones is now the head coach at Old Dominion. Greenberg has been an ESPN analyst since leaving Virginia Tech in 2012.

“He came (to Columbia) when he could,” Dave Odom said. “He would come to three, four games a year in Colonial (Life Arena). And, obviously, on vacations and things like that, he’d come down.

“It would be a stretch to say Columbia was ever his home. It wasn’t. He visited there, but he didn’t live there. But he was a Gamecock fan, I can tell you that.”

Over the weekend, he turned the majority of the country into Retriever fans.

UMBC went 7-25 the year before Ryan Odom took over. He’s now 46-24 as their coach.

Dave Odom said the hotel party lasted past 4 a.m. Saturday in Charlotte.

“You have to understand UMBC is a university, an institution and a basketball program that had never been through anything like that,” Odom said. “The hotel was full of UMBC fans, administration, cheerleaders, dancers, band members … There was a lot of adult beverages going around.”

Dave Odom’s 2004 USC team was the last he’d lead to the NCAA Tournament. Those Gamecocks fell to Memphis in the first round. Fourteen years later, another Odom advanced farther.

“To sit there and watch him coach his team, his players respond, the fans were all in unity behind him, and to see them play without fear and with great confidence against, arguably, the best team in the country at that time, it was great,” Dave Odom said. “To come out not only a winner, but a convincing winner and to see him conduct himself with great humility and be a gracious winner, I think just says so much about who he is and what he’s become.”

UMBC’s run began March 10 when it knocked off top-seeded Vermont to capture the American East tournament. It ended eight days later with a seven-point loss to Kansas State, stopping the Retrievers just short of the Sweet 16.

“I wanted him to go one more round,” Dave Odom said. “The Kansas State game was very winnable. They just didn’t do what they’ve been doing all year long, and that was make jumpers, make open shots. Had they done that, that game would have been easily won. … But none of that — if we back away from it — will darken the feelings that we have as parents for Ryan, the pride we have for him. We’re just so pleased by the way he’s conducted himself and the way he’s coached and taught his players.”

This story was originally published March 20, 2018 at 5:34 PM with the headline "South Carolina and Ryan Odom: How close was UMBC's coach to becoming a Gamecock?."