Revisiting the Common Thread Between Will Wade and Ryan Odom
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RALEIGH — Both Virginia and NC State made changes to their men's basketball programs during the offseason, with the Cavaliers hiring Ryan Odom and the Wolfpack bringing in Will Wade to run the show. While the two coaches had different paths to their first head coaching positions in the ACC, they shared some common threads, the most notable being stints at VCU.
Both Wade and Odom led the Rams as head coaches at different points of their respective careers, with Odom leaving the program to become the head coach at Virginia this season. For the first time, the two former Rams will butt heads in the ACC, with the Cavaliers headed to Raleigh for a Saturday matinee bout against the Pack.
Following different paths
Odom's arrival at Virginia marked the fulfillment of a childhood dream. He grew up on the sidelines in Charlottesville as his father, Dave Odom, was an assistant for the Cavaliers for nearly a decade. Ryan roamed the baselines and sidelines as a ball boy while his dad coached.
"Every day that I walk in there, I kind of have to pinch myself because it is a special place," Odom said. "But it's the first place that was in my heart before I came to work there. The memories from '82 to '89, you know, they're real things. They're real memories from my childhood."
Wade followed an unorthodox and controversial road to reach the Wolfpack, possibly the perfect landing spot for him. He got his start in the Ivy League, coaching under Tommy Amaker at Harvard in the late 2000s before making his way to VCU. Wade joined Shaka Smart's staff for the Rams' Final Four run in 2011, a group of coaches that has gone on to populate the various tiers of the coaching ranks in a way comparable to the Mike Shanahan coaching tree in the NFL.
After a stint at Chattanooga, Wade found his way back to VCU as the head coach, where he led the Rams to back-to-back NCAA Tournament appearances and won a game in the 2016 tournament, upsetting Oregon State. By his own admission, Wade left VCU too soon, lured by the appeal of the SEC to LSU. It was in the Bayou where his career took a turn, as he was fired after being caught in the FBI wiretap in 2022.
VCU makes diamonds
While Wade's promises of a "Red Reckoning" haven't fully been fulfilled in the first two months of his first season leading the Wolfpack, the buzz and progress made by the program are palpable. Before the triple overtime loss to Virginia Tech, Odom's Cavaliers looked more like what many NC State fans envisioned the Wolfpack would be by this point of the year.
While neither coach learned everything they know at VCU, the program in Richmond offered a sort of incubator for future coaching starlets.
"Will said to me the other day ... 'We got through there and we didn't mess it up,'" Odom said at ACC media day. "He's right in a lot of ways because VCU is built to win. It always has been. It's such an impressive place and culture that's been created there."
Went to VCU with no direction or purpose, and was lucky to stumble into my purpose & passion. I was going through one of the toughest times in my life, and was extremely naive, but I was learning from the absolute best.
— Brandon Chambers (@chambershoops) October 7, 2025
The common coaching cliché is, "I got really lucky", etc.,… https://t.co/xi4bVHBIIz
The resources, prestige and general love of the program both within the university and among fans of VCU helped make it one of the best, if not the best, mid-major programs in the nation. For Wade, like Odom, the goal was never to change the way things were done. The goal was to keep things on the consistent upward trajectory established by those who came before them, as Smart did.
"I was thrown into the fire. I replaced the best coach there of all time. Took them to the Final Four and I was just trying not to screw it up," Wade said. "They gave me the keys to the Ferrari and said, 'Drive fast. Don't put this thing in a ditch,' so I was just trying to keep that bad boy between the lines."
Wade and the Wolfpack already took down many of the assistants he coached with during his time in Richmond. NC State even beat the Rams themselves, now under yet another rising star in the coaching ranks, Phil Martelli Jr. Odom marks the final ex-Ram notch Wade can add to his belt in his first season in Raleigh. He'll try to do just that on Saturday.
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Tucker Sennett graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in Sports Journalism from the esteemed Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. A former basketball player, he has gained valuable experience working at Cronkite News and brings a deep passion for sports and reporting to his role as the NC State Wolfpack Beat Writer On SI.
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