Collegiate Times

Virginia Tech men’s basketball coach Seth Greenberg enters the 2010 college hoops season with a situation unlike those of most head coaches around the nation.

While Greenberg’s entire starting lineup returning with the Hokies projects a top-25 team early in the offseason, he enters the coming season with an almost all-new staff around him.

After losing assistant coaches Bill Courtney and Ryan Odom in April, Greenberg and the Hokies spent the subsequent two months completely restructuring their staff. 

In May, Tech began the process by naming two new assistant coaches and promoting Adrian Autry, former director of men’s basketball operations to an assistant role. Tech also added John Richardson to the bench. Autry and Richardson fill the roles left by Courtney, who was hired after the season as the new head coach at Cornell University, and Odom, who unexpectedly left Tech to join the University of North Carolina Wilmington staff in April.

In June, Greenberg and Co. finished the process by hiring former Boston University head coach Dennis Wolff to fill the final vacancy in the program left by Autry.

Wolff, who many believe is almost overqualified for the position, comes to Blacksburg with a warm welcome.

“I am excited to have Dennis Wolff join our basketball staff,” Greenberg said in a statement released by the Tech department of athletics. “He has a wealth of experience and knowledge and will no doubt be an asset to our basketball
program.”

The former BU head coach was 247-197 in 15 years in Massachusetts, earning America East Coach of the Year honors three times in his tenure there.

Though he arrives from a conference with competition much different from that of the Atlantic Coast Conference, he’s familiar with its kind.

Prior to joining the Terriers, Wolff served as an assistant coach for four years with the University of Virginia and before that, spent four years as an assistant coach at Wake Forest from 1985-89. 

“I hope to contribute however I can to the nationally respected program that coach Greenberg has built (here),” Wolff said.

After Tech closed out its season in a disappointing fashion in March, its biggest concern was whether or not star guard Malcolm Delaney, who declared for the NBA Draft in April, would leave the team
or not.

But after the departure of Courtney to Cornell and Odom’s unexpected departure for a job of equal or lesser value in Charlotte, the Hokies’ focus shifted elsewhere.

On May 5, the team announced the promotion of Autry, who joined the program in September 2008.

While Autry’s coaching history is brief, his history playing the game is not.

The former All-Big East selection was a four-year starter at point guard under coach Jim Boeheim and a team captain as a senior at Syracuse University. Out of the Bronx, N.Y., he was a McDonald’s All-American in 1990 and at St. Nicholas of Tolentine High School, won the New York City and State Championship
in 1988.

He joins Tech after spending two years as an assistant coach at Paul VI High School in Fairfax, a position he held after an 11-year professional basketball career
overseas.

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A version of this article appeared in the Aug 9 issue of the Collegiate Times.