No. 15 Virginia held off Ohio State 70-66 in the Nashville Hoops Showdown on Saturday night at Bridgestone Arena. The game was nationally televised on Fox, and announcers Gus Johnson and Jim Jackson noted the difference in spending and NIL efforts between the Virginia and Ohio State basketball programs this season.<\/p>\n
After Dallin Hall \u2014 who played three seasons at BYU before transferring to Virginia ahead of this season \u2014 scored a bucket, Johnson and Jackson spoke about how well Virginia rebuilt its roster for year one of the Ryan Odom regime.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat a job Coach Odom has done with this roster for Virginia,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cWhen Coach (Tony) Bennett decided to retire, everybody jumped in the portal. And then Coach Odom came in, and he got seven guys quickly. And some European cats as well. And right now, they\u2019re fifteenth-ranked in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSeven of their nine rotational players are new,\u201d Jackson said. \u201cAnd to be able to have this kind of success?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the difference between UVA and Ohio State is that UVA paid for it,\u201d Johnson explained. \u201cOhio State, they\u2019ve given all the money to Ryan Day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gus Johnson: \u201cThe difference between UVA and Ohio State is that UVA paid for it. Ohio State, they\u2019ve given all the money to Ryan Day.\u201d<\/p>\n
[image or embed]<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing.bsky.social<\/a>) February 14, 2026 at 7:18 PM<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cAnd that\u2019s the challenge you have at a lot of football schools, is the distribution of cash,\u201d Jackson responded. \u201cNow, how many times do you go to the same donors is the question as well, and this is an evolving scenario for all of these schools, especially a school like Ohio State. If you want to compete, you\u2019ve gotta pay nowadays.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m going to have to call President (Ted) Carter and ask him if he can just show some love in the pocketbooks for the Buckeyes\u2019 basketball team,\u201d Johnson added.<\/p>\n Day, the Ohio State football coach, makes $12.58 million a year, the third-highest annual salary among college football coaches (behind only Georgia\u2019s Kirby Smart and LSU\u2019s Lane Kiffin).<\/p>\n While Ohio State has been a powerhouse in college football, the basketball program last made the NCAA Tournament in the 2022-23 season. And it\u2019s even more of a challenge to be among the top teams in the NIL era, especially for programs that aren\u2019t allocating significant resources in that department.<\/p>\n Virginia went 15-17 last season, but finds itself 22-3 and with the program rejuvenated under Odom\u2019s leadership.<\/p>\n The Buckeyes, coached by Jake Diebler, fall to 16-9 with the loss and are currently viewed as a bubble team for the 2026 NCAA Tournament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No. 15 Virginia held off Ohio State 70-66 in the Nashville Hoops Showdown on Saturday night at Bridgestone…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":470495,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,155830,218479,398,396,397,1776,30874,99,1773],"class_list":{"0":"post-470494","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-gus-johnson","10":"tag-jim-jackson","11":"tag-ncaa","12":"tag-ncaa-football","13":"tag-ncaafootball","14":"tag-ohio-state-buckeyes","15":"tag-ryan-day","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-virginia-cavaliers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470494\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/470495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}