Wake Forest Athletics
Leaving A Legacy
4/19/2001 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
April 19, 2001
By Jay Reddick
The shock took its time setting in.
The rumors of Dave Odom's departure for South Carolina, rumbling for days, reached a peak the night of April 9, when several media outlets reported that he was the Gamecocks' leading candidate.
The next day, the rumors were confirmed. Just before 3 p.m., Odom boarded a plane for Columbia, S.C., and just after 5 p.m., he was introduced by the school's athletics director.
Still, it took words from Odom himself before the news really hit home.
"I met with the basketball team at Wake Forest about three hours ago," Odom told the gathered media at the Carolina Coliseum. "And I met with the team here at South Carolina - my team - a few minutes ago."
With those two simple words, it was truly official. Odom resigned as the men's basketball coach at Wake Forest, moving three hours down the road to South Carolina.
The reasons for Odom's departure are many, but he said he saw a similar situation to the one he found in Winston-Salem in 1989 and couldn't pass it up.
"There's a ton of opportunity here," Odom said. "One of the great things that attracted me 12 years ago when I went to Wake Forest is there was a new building called the Joel Coliseum waiting for me. And that was absolutely a springboard to excellent recruiting over a short period of time."
Odom's Gamecocks will play one year in the Carolina Coliseum before opening a new 18,000-seat facility.
Odom leaves behind a program riding an unprecedented wave of 11 consecutive postseason appearances, including eight trips to the NCAA tournament. He expressed happiness as he looked back over the past 12 years.
"With every beginning comes an end, and although today is my last day in an official capacity at Wake Forest, my feelings for the university and the basketball program will continue to grow," Odom said in a prepared statement. "I have nothing but wonderful memories of my time at Wake Forest, my experience and my relationships with everyone that has so positively affected my life and the lives of my family."
Odom said he didn't see this as time to leave as much as time to move on.
"Is there more that we could have accomplished at Wake Forest? Absolutely," Odom said in Columbia. "I needed a new challenge but not because I'm stale. I didn't tire of seeing the same people or the same fans or the same players or the same whatever every day. I just saw something here that was exciting and I wanted to be part of it....I'm leaving behind a team and a program that I think is solid."
It's hard to overstate what Odom has meant to the university and the athletic program. His 240 wins are the second-most in school history, behind only Murray Greason's 288 victories in 24 years. His ACC win total of 101 is ninth in the history of the league. The school had made a total of eight appearances in the NCAA tournament in the 50 years before Odom's arrival, Odom has equaled that total in one-quarter of the time.
But all that was in the future when Odom first showed up on campus in April 1989. The school had endured four consecutive losing seasons, and Odom was a mostly unknown commodity. He had been an assistant under Carl Tacy in the '70s and Terry Holland in the '80s, sandwiched around a 38-42 record in three years as the head coach at East Carolina. But Gene Hooks liked what he saw in Odom during a six-game stretch as Virginia's acting head coach when Holland was sick in 1989.
Odom's first Deacon squad lost its first 11 games in the conference before beating Maryland on Senior Day, then ruined Senior Days at both Virginia and N.C. State to close the year.
"All of those seniors: Ralph Kitley, David Carlyle, Antonio Johnson and Sam Ivy, learned that it is possible to win at Wake Forest, and I felt good that they were able to leave as winners," Odom said in a 1995 Gold Rush interview.
Odom was also busy on the recruiting trail. He hadn't had the opportunity to sign anyone for his first team (walk-on David Hedgecoe was the only freshman), but he made up for it in 1990, signing six players: Marc Blucas, Randolph Childress, Robert Doggett, Stan King, Trelonnie Owens and Rodney Rogers. All those six guys brought Wake Forest are two All-American awards, six All-ACC citations, two Academic All-ACC mentions, and four trips to the NCAA tournament. Oh, and Childress set an ACC Tournament scoring record in leading the Deacs to the ACC title in 1995.
In 1993, the team broke into the Sweet 16 for the first time under Odom, and the next fall, Tim Duncan came to campus. That '95 team was rated as high as No. 3 in the country, and the '96 squad won another ACC title and advanced to the final eight. In 1997, the team was rated No. 2 nationally for 10 weeks (the program's best rating ever) and Duncan was the consensus national Player of the Year. Robert O'Kelley won ACC Rookie of the Year in 1998 and later led the Deacons to an NIT championship in 2000. Odom's final Wake Forest team was ranked as high as No. 4 nationally and returned to the NCAA tournament after a three-year absence.
You look back at the body of work and one question comes to mind: How did he do it?
"When you play for him, you see things differently once you're out of college," said Jim Fitzpatrick, who played for Odom in 1999 and 2000 after transferring from Campbell, then worked as a volunteer assistant for Odom in 2001. "I've talked to (fellow alumni) Marc Scott and Joseph Amonett in the last couple of days, and we've all realized that he really cares about his players. The guy always tried to make everyone happy. He's a great guy, he did a great job at Wake Forest, and you can't take anything away from his accomplishments."
Craig Dawson, who played for Odom for three years and faces a senior season with a new coach, echoed the sentiments of the rest of the team.
"I think most of our players feel disappointed," Dawson told the Winston-Salem Journal. "But we still respect him as a coach, and we have to respect his decision. He had to do what was best for him and his family, so we have to be behind it 100 percent."
It may be odd to see someone else crouching in front of Joel Coliseum's home bench next season, but Odom's own words about one of his senior classes seems to sum it up best.
"They've done their best and we celebrate their moving on. While there's some sadness in seeing them go, there's also happiness. They will...move on and be successful, and continue to make us all proud."
THE QUOTABLE ODOM
"The years teach you that there are some things you can affect and perhaps control, and others just happen."
--March 1999
"The team prepared themselves, they knew what to do, and they just went out and did it. When it got tough, our kids answered the call."
--on winning the NIT championship, March 2000
"He has a court presence, a fearlessness, that does not allow him to be overcome by the moment. He's not overwhelmed by his success, nor is he afraid of the consequences of new experiences. Everyone can see that he has wonderful God-given talents, but he has a passion for the game and an insatiable desire to learn that truly are what set him apart from others."
--on Tim Duncan, November 1995
"When things go against him, he sees a ray of silver lining that the rest of us miss. I will put the game on him every time."
--on Randolph Childress, 1995
"I think Wake Forest is a family of friends who have been drawn together for four years. One of the things that is truly unique to Wake Forest people is that they have remained in touch through the years. The closeness that they feel transcends the degree itself. Once you're a part of the Wake Forest family, you remain there for life."
--1992
