Why Griff Aldrich makes sense
When I first heard that Griff Aldrich was the frontrunner for Longwood’s head coaching job, I have the same reaction as a lot of you… “who the heck is this guy?”.
As soon as you know your school is the brink of a leadership change you immediately start thinking about a short list of candidates who would make sense and finally turn this program around. In the 14 years playing a Division I schedule, Longwood has only placed within the Top 300 rankings twice (once in both regimes). So if there is any place in the country who has the opportunity to roll the dice on an outside the box hire, it’s us.
Troy Austin and President Reveley have been very clear in this search when it comes to what they are looking for, and that’s a culture of winning and someone who can build a program on the foundation that has been laid. If you quickly examined the college basketball landscape and were looking for a staff who fits that, while turning around a program extremely fast then the road would take you to UMBC.
I’m not just saying that because of the Retrievers upset of Virginia last night, but because of the job that Ryan Odom and his staff has done there. We just finished up a home and home scheduling deal with UMBC a few years ago. I’ll never forget that Jayson Gee said Longwood’s road trip to Baltimore was a “guaranteed” win (it wasn’t by the way). The point is, those UMBC teams were BAD and ranked among the worst in the country. In the four years before Odom, UMBC was 28–95 and never won more than five conference games. Since then they’ve gone 46–23 and have made a little history along the way.
Five years ago, Ryan Odom’s name came up in the Longwood search and many others. It was a hard pill to swallow because of two reasons.
First, Odom’s father was leading our search as a consultant, and that just didn’t feel right. The nepotism hurdle was a hard one to get over despite Odom’s resume.
The second reason is that he was a Hampden-Sydney grad. I’ve already heard a handful of Longwood alumni saying things like “we can’t hire a Hampster.” That line of thought is just flat out dumb, and I was stupid to partake in a few years ago. Who cares where our coach went to college, it’s entirely irrelevant if that coach is from somewhere with a culture of winning. What we should be looking at when examining guys like Aldrich and Odom is who they’ve learned from, and that’s Tony Shaver. I can’t imagine anyone who is a Longwood fan criticizing anything about Shaver’s coaching acumen. The guy can coach and has established a winning culture at multiple schools now.
This isn’t a “trust the process” moment, but I would implore you to keep an open mind on this hire.
This is a legitimate basketball hire, not anything else that has been unfairly speculated. People need to remember we’re one of the few schools in the country that has a former Division I athlete as a President. We have a President who is EXTREMELY invested in basketball and knows the value it can bring to the university from many angles. Lastly, we have a President who works in lockstep with his athletic director.
If you understood Taylor Reveley, then you would understand this hire. For a guy who is a son of a college president and a grandson of another college president, he doesn’t do things the way things have always been done. He seeks outside-the-box talent, tries new ways to do things, and takes admirable risks. This isn’t a status quo hire, but instead another one of those risks and I think it might pay off.
