Shockingly, less than three weeks before its season opener, Virginia needs a new men’s basketball coach.
Tony Bennett — the program’s all-time wins leader, and the architect of its lone national championship in 2019 — abruptly retired this week, only months after signing a long-term contract extension. Bennett announced during his retirement news conference on Friday that associate head coach Ron Sanchez, a longtime assistant, will be the team’s interim leader this season. Athletic director Carla Williams added that a national search will be conducted for Bennett’s permanent replacement after the season.
“I’ve always wanted this to be taken over by one of my staff members,” Bennett said Friday, explaining the timing of his decision.
In doing so, the 55-year-old is following the same playbook legendary ACC peers — Mike Krzyzewski, Roy Williams, and Jim Boeheim — took upon retiring; each was replaced by an internal, handpicked successor. The feeling from industry sources is that if Sanchez has a good year, it would be tough for Williams not to make him the permanent hire.
With that said, Williams — who took over as athletic director in 2017 — has never had the chance to hire a men’s basketball coach before, so we don’t know what her standards for Sanchez keeping the job will be. She’s also more versed in the basketball world than most athletic directors, after being an All-SEC player at Georgia in the 1980s (and later an assistant coach for the Bulldogs, before going down the administration pathway).
Williams’ biggest hire to date in Charlottesville has been Tony Elliott, the former Clemson assistant who took over Virginia’s football program in 2022. She also hired Hall of Famer Tina Thompson as UVa’s women’s coach, although Williams fired her in 2022 after Thompson went 30-63 in four seasons. Williams then tapped former Missouri State coach Amaka Agugua-Hamilton as Thompson’s successor; Agugua-Hamilton has gone 31-31 in her first two seasons with the Cavaliers.
How good is the job?
Industry sources are split on how strong the Virginia job is. On one hand, the right coach can win a national title, something few programs can tout. Bennett has also raised the tide of support for the program — in terms of fan interest and donor investment — during his tenure.
However, the question is whether or not Bennett was just that good. Can another coach be expected to come in and replicate his success? Has Bennett’s success made expectations about what is possible unrealistic for another head coach?
The program’s NIL situation has also been questioned in recent years, but industry sources are quick to note they’re unclear how much of that is due to resource availability, versus program choices. Bennett’s preference has been to develop young talent over multiple seasons, and he had a reluctance prior to this offseason to fully embrace the transfer portal. Could someone else, who would more aggressively fundraise, come in and get more resources? Ultimately, that is the question that will be most important to potential candidates if Sanchez isn’t the choice long-term.
Internal call list (in alphabetical order)
Ron Sanchez, interim head coach, Virginia: Being named interim coach vaults Sanchez to the top of the list. He’s been on-staff with the Bennett family forever, having originally joined Tony and his father Dick at Washington State in 2003; Sanchez stayed on when Tony was promoted at WSU in 2006, before following him to Virginia in 2009. Critically, he does have prior head coaching experience, having led Charlotte from 2018 to 2023.
Sanchez’s 72-78 mark over five seasons doesn’t look impressive, but considering the destitute shape Charlotte was in when Sanchez arrived — the program went 33-59 in the three seasons before he arrived — plus the fact that he went 22-14 in his final season there, Sanchez has shown he can at least right the trajectory of a mid-major program. His performance this season will be the long-term audition Bennett hoped one of his staff members would receive.
Jason Williford, associate head coach, Virginia: Not being named interim coach would appear to put Williford behind the eight ball, but his candidacy shouldn’t be discounted. One industry source even said dismissing him as a legitimate long-term replacement is “disrespectful” to the 51-year-old. Williford was a three-year starter and team captain at Virginia and made the NCAA Tournament in three of his four seasons. Like Sanchez, he was with Bennett from the beginning in Charlottesville, joining the program in 2009.
Williford has long been considered one of the best assistants in the ACC due to how well-rounded he is as a coach. He can recruit, his basketball acumen is well-regarded from an Xs and Os perspective and he’s considered an excellent developmental coach.
External call list (in alphabetical order)
Randy Bennett, head coach, Saint Mary’s: He’s a wild card with no connection to Virginia, but industry sources have brought up Bennett quite a bit as a coaching carousel candidate following Gonzaga’s decision to depart the West Coast Conference in 2026. Once the Zags leave — in addition to Oregon State and Washington State, plus BYU having already joined the Big 12 — the WCC is likely to be a one-bid league, leaving Saint Mary’s in a precarious position.
In terms of talent evaluation and development, Bennett fits a lot of Virginia’s ethos. Few coaches have done more with less in recent years, with Bennett regularly wringing 25-plus wins out of rosters built with significantly fewer resources than other schools achieving those results. He’s found success at a difficult academic school, without much help in NIL, largely on the strength of identifying (and coaching up) non-elite recruits. He has much more in common stylistically with Tony Bennett than just his surname, including immense success.
Bryce Drew, head coach, Grand Canyon: Expect Drew to be one of the hottest mid-major names this cycle, as he led Grand Canyon to a 30-5 record last season that included a victory over Saint Mary’s in the NCAA Tournament. The Antelopes are expected to be excellent again, returning a potential NBA player in Tyon Grant-Foster. Another berth in the Big Dance would mark Drew’s fourth in five seasons. Plus, Drew’s only 50 and already has a decade of head coaching experience.
He won 71.7 percent of his games at Valparaiso and made the NCAA Tournament twice in five seasons before being hired at a high-profile academic institution in Vanderbilt. Drew’s three seasons at Vanderbilt didn’t go particularly well, but he’s earned another shot at the Power 4 level.
Mitch Henderson, head coach, Princeton: Henderson has gone 70-19 in the past three seasons, including a 2023 Sweet 16 run that included a win over No. 2 Arizona. He’s known as a high-level Xs and Os coach, and his success at an Ivy League school could be attractive to Virginia. (And as a former Northwestern assistant for over a decade, he has high-major experience at a top-level academic school too.)
Don’t sleep on Henderson’s recruiting acumen, as he’s done an impressive job coaching up future professionals at Princeton. Case in point: Tosan Evbuomwan stuck in the NBA all of last season, Devin Cannady hung around the fringes of the NBA for a while, and he has another legitimate NBA prospect this year in Xaivian Lee. The fit would be strong on multiple levels.
Ritchie McKay, head coach, Liberty: Another former Bennett assistant, McKay was Virginia’s associate head coach from 2009 to 2015. If Williams wants to mine the Bennett tree but prefers a coach with a bit more experience and success than Sanchez or Williford, McKay is intriguing. He’s 149-51 the past six years at Liberty, with two NCAA Tournament appearances (and he would have had a third in 2020, after the Flames won the Atlantic Sun tournament).
The biggest thing working against McKay is his age; he’ll be 60 in April and would be more of a stopgap hire.
Ryan Odom, head coach, VCU: How poetic would it be for Odom to replace Bennett? His UMBC team beat Virginia in the 2018 NCAA Tournament in the first 16-over-1 upset in March Madness history. Since then, Odom has continued climbing the coaching ladder.
He got the Utah State job in 2021 and went 26-9 in his second season there, making the NCAA Tournament. He moved back “home” to Virginia — where he played collegiately at Hampden-Sydney, and where he spent seven seasons as a Virginia Tech assistant — and took the VCU job last year, going 24-14 in his first season and losing in the Atlantic-10 championship game.
The Rams have a real postseason shot this season, too, and should be one the A-10’s three best teams. Odom has deep ties to the region, has won at multiple places… and would be a full-circle hire after that 2018 upset.
Also worth mentioning
Williams has chosen candidates from Texas, Missouri State and Clemson in her three major hires and hasn’t shown a preference for sitting head coaches versus top assistants. Similarly, she hasn’t always picked coaches from academic institutions of Virginia’s ilk. All of which is to say, basically everything is on the table.
In conversations with industry sources, coaches listed below were brought up much more speculatively than the aforementioned candidates, but most have some connection to the area — and depending on Sanchez’s success (or lack thereof this season), could be contenders five months from now in a national search.
• Robert Jones has been highly successful at Norfolk State in the MEAC, making the NCAA Tournament in two of the past four years and never winning under 60 percent of his games in conference play. However, the leap from Norfolk State to Virginia is seen as being aggressive.
• Preston Spradlin got the job at James Madison this past year after an NCAA Tournament appearance at Morehead State last season and four consecutive 20-plus-win seasons.
• Amir Abdur-Rahim has been exceptionally successful recently at Kennesaw State and later South Florida and is seen as a rising star in the industry, though he has no real ties to the region.
• George Mason coach Tony Skinn has long-standing ties to the area and is also seen as a rising star, but is in only his second year as a head coach at his alma mater and likely would need to make a run to the NCAA Tournament. The Patriots are not projected to do that.
• Yale’s James Jones has been successful at an elite academic institution over a long period of time and has made three of the past five NCAA Tournaments. However, he’ll be 61 in February.
• Colgate’s Matt Langel can also note that level of long-running success at a high-end academic institution, leading the Raiders to the NCAA Tournament in four consecutive seasons — but he also does not have any ties to the area.
And the hire is …
Sanchez, especially if he gets Virginia to the NCAA Tournament as interim coach, is the clear favorite. Handicapping anyone else ahead of him seems wrong.
NBA scouts who have been through Virginia’s practices this offseason have said they are intrigued by Virginia’s talent. With last season’s leading scorer Isaac McKneely back, plus a number of key transfer additions — like TJ Power (Duke), Jalen Warley (Florida State), Elijah Saunders (San Diego State) and Dai Dai Ames (Kansas State) — the Cavaliers have a realistic chance to qualify for the Big Dance. Do that, and it’s hard to see anyone but Sanchez getting the job.
If Sanchez struggles, Henderson and Odom stand out as the two most obvious names. Both are young enough by head coaching standards (Henderson is 49, Odom 50). Henderson has already proven successful at a rigorous academic school, and Odom knows the area as well as anyone. Most importantly, both have been consistent winners: Henderson has captured three consecutive Ivy League regular-season titles and made the Sweet 16 in 2023. Odom, meanwhile, orchestrated that mega-upset of the Cavaliers and then made the NCAA Tournament again in his second season at Utah State.
(Top photos of Ron Sanchez and Ryan Odom: Mitchell Layton and Ryan M. Kelly / Getty Images)
