As you read this, Dave Odom is enjoying his annual Maui two-week working-vacation. The extended stay comes with the job as tournament director of the Maui Jim Maui Invitational next week that includes No. 3-ranked Michigan State.
“Nice work if you can get it,” as the George Gershwin song goes.
Odom, best known for his 13-year span coaching Wake Forest that included the Tim Duncan-era ACC titles, says he was pondering retirement plans 11 years ago following seven seasons as South Carolina’s head coach. He walked the beach at his Carolina coastal home when his cell phone rang. On the other end was a vice-president from KemperLesnik Sports Marketing, a Chicago company that runs the Maui Jim Maui Invitational, telling Odom that tournament director Dave Gavitt had recommended him to succeed Gavitt.
“Three days later I flew to Chicago and five days later I came home with a job I wasn’t looking for,” Odom said. “It’s been a godsend. It has kept me up with basketball, the style and the play.”
That’s the modestly told version.
Gavitt, who passed away in 2011 following a Basketball Hall-of-Fame career with noted coaching and administrative titles, including USA Basketball, trusted Odom for his respect gained within the coaching fraternity.
The eight-team Maui field Odom selected assembles for the 36th edition Nov. 25-27 at the Lahiana Civic Center, but each team also has a bonus “mainland” game this week. Michigan State faces Charleston Southern at 6:30 p.m. Monday at the Breslin Center.
The Spartans are then off until their opener in Maui at 5 p.m. ET on Nov. 25 against Virginia Tech. The match-up serves as a microcosm for Odom’s task to select the field. This is the story of how Michigan State and other teams end up in paradise to start the week of Thanksgiving.
“We have to pick teams about four or five years in advance, so it’s a little bit of a risk picking a team and not knowing what it will be like four or five years down the road,” Odom said. “But with a team like Michigan State, you know they’re going to be Top 15, maybe Top 10 and, like this year, a Top 5 team that was the preseason No. 1.”
Virginia Tech’s presence serves as Odom’s example that picking eight teams isn’t as easy as it sounds, adding some schools actually turn him down. Other coaches, like former Virginia Tech coach Buzz Williams, lobbied him. Virginia Tech hadn’t been to Maui since 1985.
“I started getting calls from Buzz,” Odom said. “Once a month in 2016, I’d get something from him. He told me his daughter was turning 18 in 2019 and he’d be the father of the year if they go to Maui. I said, ‘Buzz, you won’t still be there by then.’ He told me he would be.”
As it turned out, a team dropped out. Odom added Virginia Tech, but Williams subsequently left the Hokies at the end of 2018-19 season for Texas A&M.
Virginia Tech had advanced to the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet Sixteen round before its loss to Duke, which fell to Michigan State in the Elite Eight. At A&M, Williams received a pay bump to $3.8 million from 3 million, not to mention he no longer has to compete in the ACC with Duke, North Carolina and Virginia.
“Now, he’s gone and with him a lot of his players,” said Odom, referring to NBA draft pick Nickell Alexander Walker and Kerry Blackshear’s transfer to Florida. “But they have a good coach (Mike Young, from Wofford) and they beat Clemson (in their ACC opener). They’re still a good team.”
GEORGIA BONUS
Another happy circumstance that landed in Odom’s lap was Georgia freshman Anthony Edwards, a projected NBA lottery mentioned as high as No. 1 overall pick.
The 6-foot-5, 225-pounder, a 5-star prospect from Atlanta ranked the nation’s No. 1 shooting guard and No. 3 player overall by Rivals.com, resisted the trend of top players to commit to Duke or Kentucky. He picked his home-state school under coach Tom Crean, a former Michigan State assistant and head coach at Marquette and Indiana in his second year with the Bulldogs.
“That big sigh of relief you heard when Edwards committed to Georgia came from Tom Crean’s office,” Odom said. “The other sigh of relief was from me. He makes Georgia better and he’s coming to Maui.”
LIFE AS FULL CIRCLE
Another irony involves Odom’s return to Hawaii as tournament director from an infamous moment in his coaching career. He was a Virginia assistant under Terry Holland in the 1982-83 season when the Ralph Sampson-led Cavaliers suffered what is often called the biggest upset in college basketball history.
Virginia was the preseason No. 1-ranked team when it opened the season in a Tokyo tournament, starting 2-0. The Cavaliers beat Houston, which featured Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler en route to an NCAA runner-up finish at the 1983 Final Four, and Utah, with Pace Mannion. The Cavs won despite Sampson missing both games with the intestinal flu.
With the long flight home from Japan, Holland scheduled a stopover game with Honolulu’s Chaminade University, then an NAIA program. The seemingly mismatched opponents quietly played before 3,383 fans at the Honolulu International Center, an 8,800-seat arena now known as the Blaisdell Center.
Sampson took the court this time, but Chaminade pulled off a shocker with a 77-72 win. The game finished at 3 a.m. ET and word traveled slowly back to the mainland in the pre-Internet age.
“It was a surreal experience,” Odom said. “The next day at the airport the media showed up. Terry said, ‘David, you go talk to them. By the time the news gets back home, no one will believe it.’ I can’t even remember what I said. Probably some coach-speak about this was just one game.”
Despite the outcome Holland had suggested to Chaminade officials they start a tournament; that was the genesis of the first Maui Invitational in 1984.
Now fast forward to another infamous Virginia moment – the Cavaliers’ 74-54 loss to UM-Baltimore County on March 16, 2018 in the NCAA Tournament. The upset is the only time a No. 1 seed lost to a No. 16 seed.
UMBC’s coach is Ryan Odom, son of Dave and Lynn Odom.
“Those are two things in the history of Virginia basketball that will never change,” said the elder Odom, “and the Odom family is a seed in both.”
The upside of the latter shocker is the fatherly pride felt for his son.
“He’s a great coach, husband and father and son,” Odom said. “His mom and I revel in all the things he’s done. All these years he was my son. Now I’m his father. That does work well with me.”
MAUI BRACKET
The Michigan State-Virginia Tech winner faces the Georgia-Dayton winner in the top half of the second round. The bottom half first-round games are Kansas-Chaminade and BYU-UCLA. Chaminade, now an NCAA Division II program, is the host, although it only participates every other year.
The championship game is the third day at 5 p.m. ET on Nov. 27.
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\Tom Shanahan, Author: Raye of Light http://tinyurl.com/knsqtqu
— Book on Michigan State’s leading role in the integration of college football. It explains Duffy Daugherty’s untold pioneering role and debunks myths that steered recognition away from him to Bear Bryant.
http://shanahan.report/a/the-case-for-duffy-and-medal-of-freedom
Don’t believe the myths at Duffy Daugherty’s expense about Bear Bryant’s motivation to play the 1970 USC-Alabama game or myths about the Charlie Thornhill-for-Joe Namath trade. Bear Bryant knew nothing about black talent in the South while he dragged his feet on segregation.
http://www.shanahan.report/a/forty-four-underground-railroad-legacy-facts
http://shanahan.report/a/myths-that-grew-out-of-1970-alabama-game-with-usc
http://shanahan.report/a/mystery-solved-in-thornhill-and-namath-myth
David Maraniss, Pulitzer Prize winner and biographer; “History writes people out of the story. It’s our job to write them back in.”
https://www.augustpublications.com/products/raye-of-light-jimmy-raye-duffy-daugherty-the-integration-of-college-football-and-the-1965-66-michigan-state-spartans
https://www.augustpublications.com/
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