Jeff Jones on Odom’s offense, recruiting and defense

By Jerry Ratcliffe

One aspect of Ryan Odom’s recruiting reach that may have been overlooked during his introductory press conference on Monday was his international links.

Jeff Jones, who coached at Virginia, American and ODU, and hired Odom at American years ago, attended Monday’s event, and was all onboard with the hire.

“He’s a coach’s son and he knows the game,” said Jones, who was also a coach’s son (as was former UVA coach Tony Bennett). [Odom] looks at it differently than just guys who have played basketball.”

As an assistant to Jones for two years at American, Jones was amazed at Odom’s ability to recruit internationally, developing recruiting ties that father, Dave Odom, created while at Wake Forest, i.e. Tim Duncan, Ricky Peral and others.

“Ryan had great international contacts,” Jones said. “In fact, his recruiting internationally was probably better at that time than it was recruiting kids from the U.S. At one point, we had seven or eight international kids at American. We called ourselves NATO.”

Odom’s VCU team this past season had two players from England, one from France and another from Ukraine.

Jones has closely watched Odom develop over the years in terms of coaching philosophy, and liked what he heard during Monday’s press conference.

“It was definitely true what he was saying about the offense,” Jones said. “He definitely was more offensive-thinking (when he worked at American) than defensive at that time.

“When he first went to UMBC, I was at Old Dominion and we were going to play at Towson. We practiced at UMBC and Dave (Odom) was there. Dave pulled me aside — he uses me sometimes to deliver messages to Ryan, noting that Ryan wouldn’t listen to his father — and Dave wanted me to talk to him about they’ve got to be better defensively.”

Jones shared a laugh, noting that sons will often listen to someone else other than their fathers. So Jones passed the message along and “Ryan was like, ‘Yeah, I know. He tells me all the time.’

“But as he evolved as a coach, anybody who watched his team this past year knows that they do pay attention to defense, but I think stylistically, it will be very different than what folks here have been accustomed to.”