CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — Virginia athletic director Carla Williams is hoping the obvious choice was the right one.
Williams named VCU coach Ryan Odom — whose father was a Cavaliers assistant and who handed the program its most historic and crushing defeat in the 2018 NCAA Tournament — as the full-time replacement to Tony Bennett on Saturday.
Odom’s season ended Thursday with a first-round NCAA Tournament loss to BYU. The Rams are the third team he’s taken into March Madness, leading UMBC and Utah State there in his previous coaching stops.
At UMBC, he made college basketball history, with Virginia on the wrong end of it. Odom’s Retrievers became the first No. 16-seed to upset a 1-seed when they routed the heavily favored Cavaliers 74-54 in 2018.
Seven years later, Odom is being tasked with getting Virginia — which recovered to win the 2019 national championship — back into contention for No. 1 seeds.
Bennett stunningly retired just three weeks before the start of the 2024-25 season. He went 364-136 in 15 years leading the Cavaliers, guiding them to 10 NCAA Tournaments.
His longtime assistant, Ron Sanchez, was named interim coach. Sanchez went 15-17 this year — the first time the Cavaliers have finished with a losing record since 2009-10, Bennett’s first season leading the program.
Williams announced she would not retain Sanchez just hours after the Cavaliers’ season ended with an ACC Tournament loss to Georgia Tech — and speculation immediately turned to Odom.
The 50-year-old Odom wasn’t the only name Williams considered as she focused her search on current head coaches, including New Mexico’s Richard Pitino and Grand Canyon’s Bryce Drew.
But he was, from the start, the favorite for the post in Charlottesville, where he spent much of his childhood, serving as a Cavaliers ball boy and riding his bicycle to University Hall to attend practices after his school day finished.
His father was a Virginia assistant from 1982-1989, when Ryan was in third through 10th grade. The elder Odom helped the Cavaliers reach five NCAA Tournaments, including its 1984 run to the Final Four.
His son became a national name after the UMBC upset of Virginia, and one of the hottest up-and-coming coaches in the game. He went 97-60 with the Retrievers.
Being born in North Carolina and playing his college basketball at Hampden-Sydney, outside of Richmond, Odom surprised many when he went west and took the Utah State job in 2021.
Odom went 44-25 in two seasons with the Aggies, leading them to the NIT and then the NCAA Tournament.
He made his move back east in 2023 when he took over at VCU. In his first season in Richmond, Odom led the Rams to a 24-14 mark and a spot in the NIT. This year, VCU went 28-7 and won the Atlantic 10 championship, putting Odom into March Madness yet again.
His team fell in the first round, 80-71, to BYU on Thursday, and by Friday, his deal at Virginia was all but complete.
Odom takes over a Virginia program that has not won an NCAA Tournament game since defeating Texas Tech in Minneapolis in 2019 for the national title.
His own postseason record, since the monumental UVA upset in 2018, is similarly unremarkable.
He’s 0-2 in the NCAA Tournament and 2-2 in the NIT.
Virginia will formally introduce Odom at a news conference Monday at John Paul Jones Arena.
AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-mens-bracket and coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness. Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here.
Virginia Commonwealth head coach Ryan Odom swings the net after cutting it down after winning an NCAA college basketball game in the championship of the Atlantic 10 tournament against George Mason, Sunday, March 16, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)
Virginia Commonwealth head coach Ryan Odom swings the net after cutting it down after winning an NCAA college basketball game in the championship of the Atlantic 10 tournament against George Mason, Sunday, March 16, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)
Virginia Commonwealth head coach Ryan Odom reacts during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game in the championship of the Atlantic 10 tournament against George Mason, Sunday, March 16, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)
WASHINGTON (AP) — As President Donald Trump and his adviser Elon Musk work to overhaul the federal government, they’re forcing out thousands of workers with insider knowledge and connections who now need a job.
For Russia, China and other adversaries, the upheaval in Washington as Musk's Department of Government Efficiency guts government agencies presents an unprecedented opportunity to recruit informants, national security and intelligence experts say.
Every former federal worker with knowledge of or access to sensitive information or systems could be a target. When thousands of them leave their jobs at the same time, that creates a lot of targets, as well as a counterespionage challenge for the United States.
“This information is highly valuable, and it shouldn’t be surprising that Russia and China and other organizations — criminal syndicates for instance — would be aggressively recruiting government employees,” said Theresa Payton, a former White House chief information officer under President George W. Bush, who now runs her own cybersecurity firm.
Each year an average of more than 100,000 federal workers leave their jobs. Some retire; others move to the private sector. This year, in three months, the number is already many times higher.
It's not just intelligence officers who present potential security risks. Many departments and agencies oversee vast amounts of data that include personal information on Americans as well as sensitive information about national security and government operations. Exiting employees could also give away helpful security secrets that would allow someone to penetrate government databases or physical offices.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, for instance, maintains information on trade negotiations that could help an adversary undercut the United States. Federal records house data on clandestine intelligence operations and agents. Pentagon databases contain reams of sensitive information on U.S. military capabilities. The Department of Energy oversees many of the nation's most closely guarded nuclear secrets.
“This happens even in good times — someone in the intelligence community who for personal financial or other reasons walks into an embassy to sell America out — but DOGE is taking it to a whole new level,” said John Schindler, a former counterintelligence official.
“Someone is going to go rogue,” he said. “It’s just a question of how bad it will be.”
Only a tiny fraction of the many millions of Americans who have worked for the federal government have ever been accused of espionage. The overwhelming number are conscientious patriots who would never sell out their country, Payton said.
Background checks, employee training and exit interviews are all designed to prevent informants or moles — and to remind departing federal employees of their duty to preserve national secrets even after leaving federal service.
It takes only one or two misguided or disgruntled workers to cause a national security crisis. Former FBI agent Robert Hanssen and former CIA officer Aldrich Ames, who both spied for Russia, show just how damaging a single informant can be.
Hanssen divulged sweeping information about American intelligence-gathering, including details that authorities said were partly responsible for the outing of U.S. informants in Russia who were later executed for working on America's behalf.
The odds that one angry former employee reaches out to a foreign power go up as many federal employees find themselves without a job, experts said. What's not in doubt is that foreign adversaries are looking for any former employees they can flip. They're hunting for that one informant who could deliver a big advantage for their nation.
“It's a numbers game,” said Schindler.
Frank Montoya Jr., a retired senior FBI official and former top U.S. government counterintelligence executive, said he was less concerned about well-trained intelligence community employees betraying their oaths and selling out to American adversaries. But he noted the many workers in other realms of government who could be targeted by Russia or China,
“When it comes to the theft of intellectual property, when it comes to the theft of sensitive technology, when it comes to access to power grids or to financial systems, an IRS guy or a Social Service guy who’s really upset about what DOGE is doing, they actually are the bigger risk,” Montoya said.
Once military and intelligence officials were the primary targets of foreign spies looking to turn an informant. But now, thanks to the massive amount of information held at many agencies, and the competitive edge it could give China or Russia, that's no longer the case.
“We have seen over the last generation, the last 20–25 years, the Chinese and the Russians increasingly have been targeting non-national defense and non-classified information, because it helps them modernize their military, it helps them modernize their infrastructure," Montoya said.
The internet has made it far easier for foreign nations to identify and recruit potential informants.
Once, Soviet intelligence officers had to wait for an embittered agent to make contact, or go through the time-consuming process of identifying which recently separated federal employees could be pliable. Now, all you need is a LinkedIn subscription and you can quickly find former federal officials in search of work.
“You go on LinkedIn, you see someone who was ‘formerly at Department of Defense now looking for work’ and it’s like, 'Bingo,’" Schindler said.
A foreign spy service or scammer looking to exploit a recently laid-off federal worker could bring in potential recruits by posting a fake job ad online.
One particularly novel concern involves the fear that a foreign agent could set up a fake job interview and hire former federal officials as “consultants” to a fake company. The former federal workers would be paid for their expertise without even knowing they were supplying information to an enemy. Russia has paid unwitting Americans to do its business before.
Payton's advice for former federal employees looking for work? It's the same as her guidance for federal counterespionage officials, she said: "Be on high alert."
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not respond to questions about the risks that a former federal worker or contractor could sell out the country. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently announced plans to investigate leaks within the intelligence community, though her announcement was focused not on counterespionage concerns but on employees who pass information to the press or the public.
In a statement, the office said it would investigate any claims that a member of the intelligence community was improperly releasing information.
“There are many patriots in the IC that have reached out to DNI Gabbard and her team directly, explaining that they have raised concerns on these issues in the past but they have been ignored," the office said. “That will no longer be the case.”
FILE - Demonstrators rally in support of federal workers outside of the Department of Health and Human Services, Feb. 14, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
