Ann Holland was wary. Not because she thought Ryan Odom was undeserving of becoming the next University of Virginia men’s basketball coach, or because she preferred another candidate.
No, Terry Holland’s widow was reluctant to see someone she’s known since he was a boy take over the program her husband once put on the national map because, well, she wasn’t ready to stress-watch the Cavaliers again.
“I had gotten used to not being so excited about basketball and having stomachaches and headaches,” Holland said Monday following Odom’s introductory news conference at John Paul Jones Arena. “And now, I got to go back to that.
“But now that he’s here, he’s perfect. Virginia made a really, really good choice.”
Holland had an aisle seat Monday, five rows back from the podium where Odom was the main attraction for an impromptu Wahoo basketball reunion.
Ryan Odom’s father, Dave, sits over Terry Holland’s left shoulder during a UVA men’s basketball game in the 1980s. Dave was an assistant coach under Holland for seven seasons. (UVA Athletics photo)
All around Holland were players – Ralph Sampson, Ricky Stokes, Wally Walker and Jeff Jones among them – who helped define her husband’s legacy at UVA. Two and a half decades after Terry retired as the Cavaliers’ all-time winningest coach, there’s a direct link back to that celebrated era.
Odom, 50, said Charlottesville was the place where he “fell in love with basketball,” a product of his time around his father, Dave, who served as Terry Holland’s assistant coach from 1982 to 1989.
Odom flashed back Monday to his boyhood memories of sitting on the 7-foot-4 Sampson’s knee and watching Jones dribble between his legs.
“I watched the team practice,” he said, “and they would get after it every day. You learned the value of hard work and togetherness and intensity.”
Odom was in third grade when his dad moved the family from North Carolina to Charlottesville’s Lewis Mountain neighborhood. Their house on Morris Road was two doors down from the Hollands’ residence.
