Long before he was a coach, Ryan Odom was a coach’s son. Dave Odom spent over 40 years coaching college basketball, and while the transfer portal and social media announcing who’s in it weren’t what they are now, Ryan was looking for potential contributors for his dad’s teams.
When Ryan arrived from Utah State to become VCU’s coach in 2023, he had a daunting task. With the Rams’ top six scorers leaving — four via transfer — after Mike Rhoades left for Penn State, he had to replenish the roster, and quickly.
Things came full circle. Connor Odom, Ryan’s son, had an idea: What about Joe Bamisile? Connor and Bamisile had both played high school ball in Virginia and had mutual connections, and Connor had kept tabs on the start of Bamisile’s college career.
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After a winding, emotional first three years of college basketball, Bamisile was ready to return home, too.
“I told my mom, like, ‘Hey, regardless of what happens, I’m just going to go to either VCU or Richmond,'” Bamisile said. “I didn’t really care at the time. And I texted coach Rhodes before he left and I was like, ‘Are you guys having scholarships open?’ and he was like, ‘We have too many guards.'”
So that was it, it seemed. Bamisile would return to his hometown as a Spider and become a conference and inter-city rival of the Rams.
But then Rhoades left, and Odom acted quickly. Bamisile visited both schools, their arenas separated by less then 20 minutes in Virginia’s capital, and preferred VCU’s basketball and academic fits.
“It made sense for Joe to be here,” Odom said. “It made sense for us to have Joe here. … Joe certainly checked all the boxes.”
The initial connection has blossomed into a wonderful partnership. “There’s never a bad day with Joe,” Odom said after the Rams’ regular-season finale.
And there’s hardly been a bad day for VCU, either. The Rams enter the Atlantic 10 Tournament as the regular-season conference co-champions with a 25-6 record and face No. 8 seed St. Bonaventure in the second round at 11:30 a.m. Friday. Bamisile is the second-leading scorer on a team full of veterans, one that’s hoping to make some March magic by winning the A-10 Tournament Championship Game (1 p.m. ET on CBS and streaming on CBSSports.com, CBS Sports App and Paramount+ with Showtime) under a coach that knows all about it.
Bamisile finds a home at VCU
Just because Odom says “there’s never a bad day with Joe” over their two years together doesn’t mean there weren’t bad days before.
Bamisile started his career at Virginia Tech in 2020-21 but saw minimal playing time. He transferred to George Washington, where coach Jamion Christian, had recruited him in high school. Bamisile starred but he struggled with loneliness off the court, he told The Washington Post, and Christian got fired after the season ended.
Then came Oklahoma, where Bamisile thought the combination of assistant coach Emanuel Dildy, another coach who had recruited him in high school, plus escaping a big city would be helpful.
Then tragedy struck. Bamisile’s father, John, was hospitalized twice with heart failure and later had open-heart surgery. Bamisile went home and considered not returning to Norman, where he wasn’t playing much. But Porter Moser convinced him to stay on track academically so he could transfer after the season. Bamisile obliged, and when he committed to play for Odom at VCU, it looked like Bamisile’s roller coaster ride was over.
But the NCAA didn’t give Bamisile a waiver. He’d have to sit out a year … until a U.S. District Court judge issued a temporary restraining order against the NCAA, paving the way for multi-time transfers like Bamisile to play. Bamisile had been next in line to speak at the virtual hearing, in fact, when the decision was made.
Initially, it was only going to be a temporary reprieve. Bamisile didn’t care; he was more than ready to play. That night, though, VCU athletic director, Ed McLaughlin called, telling him he’d be able to play the rest of the season.
“I was like, ‘Let’s gooooo!'” Bamisile remembers, smiling. “Just started thanking God.”
Bamisile points to his faith as something that’s helped him on and off the court, his father’s health battles providing perspective.
“I think now I play basketball and I am not nearly as controlled by the outcomes slash controlled by the results slash controlled by even what the perception of myself is anymore, like I used to be,” Bamisile said. “And I think sometimes, like, real things happen to us that help us to grow spiritually, emotionally, mentally.”
Bamisile takes things in stride, knowing there’s a world outside basketball. He loves that his family members can see him play, but he loves that he can grab lunch or just hang out with them even more. Don’t mistake this for a lack of intensity, though. Bamisile knows this is a huge opportunity, one he’s lucky to have.
“When the time came where I can play, I was just grateful that my mindset on basketball shifted from kind of being transactional with it to being more appreciating the fact that God has allowed me to do something that people would die to do,” he said.
Bamisile, shining on and off the court, has found a home at VCU.
VCU makes Ukranian native Shulga feel at home
The only player scoring more points this season for VCU is Max Shulga, who stayed at Utah State when Odom took over there in 2021 and followed Odom to VCU in 2023. After all, when you’re already more than 5,000 miles from home, a cross-country move isn’t a big deal. Shulga is from Kyiv, Ukraine, which has been at the center of the Russo-Ukrainian War since 2022.
“I think he was staying up all night and trying to just make sense of what was going on and probably had a ton of fear and anxiety going on, all while trying to perform and play in a season and be there for his team and all that,” Odom said.
Like Bamisile, Shulga has improved at compartmentalizing and gained perspective that while basketball is a big thing, it’s not the only thing. Still, the basketball strides are undeniable. Shulga was this year’s A-10 Player of the Year, filling up the box score with averages of 15.5 points, 5.9 rebounds, 3.8 assists and 1.9 steals. The last Atlantic 10 player to hit those marks was Rick Brunson — Knicks star Jalen Brunson’s father — in 1994-95.
It almost never happened. Shulga entered the transfer portal last offseason and committed to Villanova before deciding to return to VCU, with Odom and a strong returning core being strong pulls.
“You come out a different person after being with Coach Odom for however many months or years you’ve been with him,” Shulga said. “You come out as a better person and a better player. … At the end of the day, when I really thought about my last year: ‘Do I really want to leave or was it just an emotional decision that I made?'”
Emotions ran plenty high last week. Ahead of senior night, VCU executive chef Jennifer Taylor cooked Shulga the Ukrainian soup borscht, according to The Guardian, and on senior night, fans waved Ukrainian flags when Shulga was introduced.
“That meant a lot,” Shulga said. “It just showed how tight our fans are with the players, how family-like (the) environment is. They’ve been showing nothing but love to us and to myself ever since I came here two years ago.”
Shulga, 6-foot-5 and 210 pounds, can play guard or forward and is an elite shooter. He spent the offseason reviewing situations he could be more aggressive using his shooting off the dribble and practicing that exact skill, and he is a 95th-percentile spot up shooter this season, per Synergy Sports.
But he’s not just a shooter. In a Feb. 22 win over George Mason that gave the Rams the conference lead, Shulga scored 22 points on just nine field goal attempts (he made four 3-pointers) and was a perfect 8 for 8 from the free-throw line. He’s even made his way into the second round of some NBA mock drafts.
Remember, this is from a guy who hardly played his first year at Utah State and was still just a role player his second year.
“It’s been so gratifying for me, personally, to watch him grow over the course of four years,” Odom said. “In this climate nowadays, it’s harder to coach guys four years, and to have that relationship with him, to watch maturity level skyrocket, to watch how he had to work for it … He’s very close with my kids and my wife and it’s just the way it should be.”
With Ukrainian pride in his heart, Ukrainian food in his stomach and Ukrainian flags flying around him, Shulga has found a home at VCU.
Jackson sticks around and lays a foundation
Shulga stayed at Utah State when Odom arrived and proved to be a foundational piece. Zeb Jackson is that guy for Odom at VCU. A former four-star recruit who started his career at Michigan, Jackson transferred to VCU and played a season under Rhoades. He, too, could have left, but Odom and his staff struck the perfect balance of expressing their desire for him to stay and explaining why it would be beneficial for both parties.
Jackson became a starter leading Odom’s attack and scored more points in 2023-24 than he had in his first three collegiate seasons combined. That could have been it — Jackson had played four years after all — but the Rams had finished one game short of the NCAA Tournament, falling to Duquesne in the A-10 Tournament final. Jackson sensed there could be something special, especially with Bamisile and Shulga also returning.
But then Jackson broke his hand in the preseason and missed the start of the season. If that wasn’t challenging enough, when he returned, it was off the bench.
“Obviously, it’s a team sport,” Jackson said. “It’s not about me, but everybody’s human. Things go through your head a little bit. Spending time by myself, I kind of was wondering ‘How much does that really matter to me?’ and ‘Is it really important?’
“I just ended up sitting down with coach, talking to him, expressing my feelings to him and just being honest. And he’s that type of guy where it’s easy to do that. So I’m super grateful for coach and the rest of the staff having those open conversations with me, keeping me level-headed and just helping me continue to put my mind on others.”
Jackson has learned how to glean opponent tendencies, watching for early advantages the Rams have and disadvantages they may need to address. It’s worked wonders: He won A-10 Sixth Man of the Year.
Even coming off the bench, Jackson has found a home at VCU.
Role players pay dividends for Rams
Three players don’t make a team. So Odom added experienced transfers to his team already full of experienced transfers. Jack Clark is in his seventh year of college and at his fourth school. He provides height (6-10) and rebounding (team-best 6.9 per game), but he also shoots 35% from 3-point range. Phillip Russell, also at his fourth school, splits point guard duties with Jackson and is the team’s second-best 3-point shooter behind Shulga.
This gives Odom a plethora of leaders. They all fill that role differently.
Bamisile, Odom says, is “very thoughtful … very caring of others.” That should come as no surprise: Bamisile is all about giving back. He developed a mental health social media platform, Maunda, as his undergraduate capstone project and has used NIL money to help it grow. One of the app’s features is scheduled meditation; Bamisile meditates every morning.
Bamisile has taken the freshmen under his wing, whether they play a lot or not. After all, he has been in both situations.
“I just try to share that as much as possible with other people,” Bamisile said. “And sometimes it looks like yelling and screaming. Sometimes it looks like talking to a guy one-on-one. Sometimes it’s just making sure the group is okay and bringing everyone together and saying what needs to be said, and sometimes it’s a little more serious, sometimes it’s a little more easygoing.
“I think that life is too short to not share with other people, so I have an ability to share joy and positivity. So why not?”
Shulga, Odom says, is the quiet one, but when he talks, everyone listens.
Then Odom backtracks: Clark is even quieter. But his bonafides speak loudly. He was a key part of Clemson’s Elite Eight run last year, and he’s playing “lights out” once again down the stretch, Odom notes.
Then there’s the point guard duo: Russell is the competitor — in practice, in games, everywhere. He’ll speak his mind, bring the energy and be the vocal leader. Jackson is also outspoken, and he leads by example: “The consummate worker, a positive individual,” Odom says.
It’s quite the group: transfers new and familiar, high-school recruits and holdovers. Balancing it all requires those catchphrases coaches often say but rarely execute.
“I think two of the biggest things in today’s climate is finding guys that are going to be about winning,” Odom said. “You have to really do your due diligence to figure that out. Secondly, what’s the character? Is this a person that we wanna be around on a daily basis?”
He will give himself — well, himself and his staff — some credit here. They’ve hit the nail on the head. Odom has crafted teams that can win with offense or defense, but this year’s Rams own the A-10’s best offensive and defense. The Rams hold opponents to the sixth-lowest efficient field goal percentage in Division I. They’re 6-5 in Quad 1 + Quad 2 games this season but 5-2 in said games since the calendar flipped to 2025.
The Rams might need to win the Atlantic 10 Tournament to make the NCAA Tournament but are the top seed in the conference tournament and are a projected No. 11 seed in Jerry Palm’s Bracketology. It would be the second time Odom leads a program to March Madness in his second season there, an impressive show of program-building acumen.
It’s worth noting that Odom is home, too. He spent much of his childhood in Virginia, and the significance of leading this team — “a joy to coach” he says — isn’t lost on him.
Still, he’s loath to talk about himself. He’ll always be known as the person who coached UMBC to its upset of No. 1 seed Virginia in 2018. That, to be fair, will be hard to top, not that he’ll stop trying, as his ventures to Utah State and VCU show.
He credits his staff for his success. This year’s group includes assistants that go back to his UMBC days but also Darius Theus and Bradford Burgess. Before UMBC VCU was arguably the most famous Cinderella: The 2010-11 team, featuring Burgess and Theus, made the Final Four as an 11 seed. Can this team do the same?
“We can’t really control what the people in the room that pick the teams for the tournament do, but we can control how we approach every game and how we play,” Shulga said. “That’s the mindset we have. We just prepare for every game the same. Do what we do in the games, what we do in practice, play together and just let everything else play out.”
Spoken like a true veteran, one that knows how to navigate the ups and downs of basketball and of life. Considering his path, his teammates and his coach, that’s no surprise.
