Column: Ryan Odom’s belief in analytics will help USU Basketball

The passion and basketball legacy of new Utah State head basketball coach Ryan Odom is no secret. 

Basketball runs in his veins. His father Dave Odom and his brother Lane Odom are both titans of the game. Dave coached all over the east coast, including East Carolina, South Carolina and most notably a 12-year stint at Wake Forest, where he coached Tim Duncan. In addition to two Atlantic Coast Conference championships and three National Invitation Tournament championships, Dave Odom was also named the Coach of the Year three times in the ACC and once in the Southeastern Conference. 

Lane Odom was an assistant coach at Alabama, East Carolina University, University of North Carolina Charlotte and Missouri. He is the founder of SportMatch, a website built to help prospective athletes find collegiate programs, and is currently a scout for the Utah Jazz. 

Growing up in such a strong basketball culture certainly helped Ryan Odom in his coaching career. Odom was most recently at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. While there, he went 97-60 with a conference regular-season championship, a conference tournament championship and a win in the NCAA tournament. 

Before his days in Baltimore, he spent a decade on the east coast learning from different coaches and systems as an assistant, making stops at South Florida and Virginia Tech. He landed a job as the associate head coach at Charlotte in 2011 and became head coach at Lenoir-Rhyne in 2016 before taking over at UMBC in 2017.  

Utah Jazz head coach Quin Snyder said, “(Odom) has the experience and passion to continue to build an elite program in Logan.” 

But don’t expect his basketball background to be the only factor of his success in Cache Valley. Beyond his basketball IQ and years of coaching, Odom has expressed a desire to have his staff on the cutting edge of modern basketball analytics.

“It’s huge,” Odom said of analytics. “It’s here, alright. We’re not getting away from it. How you use it is extremely important… I’m not going to totally sell out to the numbers, but the numbers tell a lot of the story.” 

Odom proved his commitment to analytics when he announced the final piece of his staff– Noah Ralby– would be the director of analytics. The director of analytics may not be a familiar title, but that’s because Odom’s staff is the first and only team in the state and conference to have a position like it. 

Analytics might seem like a complicated set of algorithms and models used to create complex in-game strategies, but I think one simple equation sums up a large part of it. Shooting more 3-pointers = winning more games.

Adhering to this philosophy has proven successful in recent years. The Golden State Warriors won three championships off of shooting 3-pointers, and players like Damian Lillard and James Harden have created a career out of launching a high-volume of deep shots. The Jazz and Snyder found record-breaking success this past season, averaging 16.7 threes per game in the regular season– the most in NBA history. 

Odom understood this during his tenure at UMBC, and it showed in the numbers. In the five years under Odom, the Retrievers averaged 22.7 3-point attempts per game. In the 2017-18 season, when they defeated No. 1 Virginia in the first round of the NCAA tournament. 44.3 percent of UMBC’s shot attempts came beyond the arch— good for No. 44 in the nation. 

Under former Aggie coach Craig Smith, Utah State only averaged 20.8 3-point attempts per game in three seasons. This included two years with NBA sharpshooter Sam Merrill. During Merrill’s senior season from 2019-20, they shot 32.9 percent of shots from beyond the arch, which was No. 194 in the nation. 

Last season, it was evident they needed to shoot more behind the line. When they shot more 3-pointers than their opponent, they went 7-2 (.777) as opposed to 13-7 (.650) when they didn’t. 

In their nine losses, they were outshot by 167 to 196 from beyond the arch, which is a per-game average of 18.56 to 21.78 attempts. 

In addition to 3-point hesitation, the biggest problem for the Aggies last season was turnovers. They averaged 13.6 turnovers a game and 6.6 live-ball turnovers– when the opposition gets a steal. By comparison, UMBC averaged 12.9 turnovers and 5.4 live-ball turnovers per game last year. 

The live ball turnovers in particular burned the Aggies several times. USU gave up a double-digit number of steals five times. They finished 2-3 in these games, including a season-high 13 in a loss against UNLV.

UMBC averaged only 5.4 live-ball turnovers per game and had double digits on just two occasions. 

And if you look at the Ken Pomeroy statistic of turnover percentage (amount of possessions that end in turnovers), it shows that UMBC averaged 18.8 percent (No. 168) in 2020-21 while USU averaged 20.1 percent (No. 234). 

This could be a great sign for the future of Utah State basketball as it shows that under Odom, the Aggies could cut back on live-ball turnovers and stay out of transition defense. 

This could indicate a cerebral style of play that emphasizes ball control and offensive discipline. It may seem reminiscent of the opportunistic and old-fashioned style of play that was seen under Stew Morrill.

Odom’s history of high 3-point usage and low turnover rates also suggest that, through recruiting and player development, Odom and his staff can produce great guard play. 

The 2021-22 Aggie roster looks to have depth at the guard position. They include transfers RJ Etyle-Rock and Rylan Jones, as well as returners such as Brock Miller, Sean Bairstow, Max Shulga and Steven Ashworth. 

They seem to be personnel perfectly capable of cutting down on turnovers and shooting more 3-pointers. 

The past three years under Smith were no doubt successful, with back-to-back Mountain West championships, but there were flaws in the Aggie’s offense that were often masked by the talent of the Aggie players.

Having the arguably best USU scorer of all-time, Sam Merrill, helped the Aggies be respectable offensively from 2018-20, boasting an offensive efficiency of 109.6 (No.49) in the 2019-20 season. And last year, the elite defensive play of Neemias Queta and the rebounding prowess of the team as a whole helped them surmount their shooting and turnover flaws. 

They collected an offensive rebound on 35.3 percent of their shots— No.13 in the nation— yet still had an adjusted offensive efficiency of 104.8 percent— No. 126 nationally. 

With no clear NBA talent on this year’s roster, the Aggies will have to be more efficient on offense this upcoming season, and Odom’s proven ability to utilize analytics leads me to believe that they will be. 

Time will tell how successful Odom will be at Utah State, but one thing is certain. Aggie basketball is going to look different this year. Combining a passion for the game and cutting edge analytics, Odom will give himself an opportunity to win basketball games and create a legacy for himself in Cache Valley.