America East Basketball News and Notes: A New Man to Run UMBC

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There will be a new man roaming the sidelines as the head basketball coach at UMBC. That’s because Riley Odem has decided to step down as the head man and take the job at Utah State. In five seasons with the Retrievers, he posted a record of 97-60. In his seven years as a head coach, Odem has posted an overall mark of 126-81. He ends his time at UMBC as the third-winningest coach in the program’s history. He led the team to three straight 20-win seasons in his first three years at the helm. His finest moment at UMBC came in 2018 when he led the team to the America East Tournament Title. When the field of 68 was announced for that year’s NCAA tournament, the Retrievers were awarded a sixteen seed. Their opponent was number one seeded Virginia. They would pull off the first-ever #16 seed win over a #1 seed with a 74-54 victory.

This past year, UMBC won a share of the regular-season championship with Vermont. Odem was also named Coach of the Year in the league. The share of the regular season title was the first since 2008. They would get knocked out of the conference tournament at home in the semifinals by UMass Lowell. Odem takes over a Utah State program that has had some successes in recent years. They have been a part of the last three NCAA tournaments and have won two of the last three Mountain West Tournament Championships. In that time, Utah State has recorded a record of 74-24 and 42-12 in league play.

The UMBC program began a national search for the next head man of the program. The search has found the new man, Jim Ferry, who has been at Duquesne, Penn State, and LIU Brooklyn, has been named the new head coach of UMBC. He has been coaching for twenty years at all three levels of NCAA basketball. His best stint came at LIU Brooklyn where he went 150-149, with back-to-back Northeast Conference tournament championships in 2011 and 2012. Both of those teams made NCAA tournament appearances. In the league under Ferry, LIU Brooklyn went 98-82 in ten seasons. This past season, Ferry took over at Penn State for Pat Chambers on an interim basis after Chambers left the program back in October. He guided the Nittany Lions to an 11-14 overall record and a 7-12 mark in the Big Ten.

Ferry will be introduced as the new UMBC head coach in a press conference on Wednesday.

Next week we get more news from America East.