After a 2022-23 season in which the VCU Rams' men's basketball team won the Atlantic 10's regular-season and tournament titles and made an NCAA tournament appearance, head coach Mike Rhoades -- and, subsequently, numerous players -- departed the roster.
However, incoming head coach Ryan Odom has made moves in the past week to replenish the team. The Richmond Times-Dispatch's Zach Joachim joined Adam Epstein on Thursday (April 20) to break down the latest.
"It's going to look like a really new team going into next year," Joachim said. "[...] Tons of roster turnover coming in from Mike Rhoades to Ryan Odom, and a couple of guys who were huge for VCU last year have obviously followed Mike to Penn State in Ace Baldwin and Nick Kern. I know Ram Nation wishes them all the best, but there's been tons of turnover and a lot of question marks with all the roster spots -- I think they actually got up to seven guys in the portal, counting Josh Banks and Jaron McAllister."
Jamir Watkins, Jayden Nunn, Jalen DeLoach also entered the portal alongside those four.
"[...] We're going to be looking at a very new VCU team next year," he said. "I know that he's been a busy man these last few weeks, and I think the first couple of weeks they were pretty quiet, and a lot of people in Ram Nation started wondering what Ryan's been up to [...] and we saw a lot of his work behind the scenes in those first couple of weeks come to fruition over the last week with this group of local kids who are coming back to compete in the black and gold. It's an awesome story."
Listen to the full conversation below.