One-on-one with VCU head coach Mike Rhoades

VCU head coach Mike Rhoades is going on his sixth season at the helm of the Rams program. The 12th head coach in program history has made two NCAA Tournaments and won 65.8 percent of his games while sitting in that first chair.

Can you tell me which two non-high major conferences have put players in the NBA Draft each of the last three years? The West Coast Conference and the Atlantic 10. Now, can you tell me which non-high major program has put players in the NBA Draft each of the last two years? Gonzaga and VCU.

This is Rhoades second stint in Richmond. He was on staff with Shaka Smart for six seasons, including the Final Four run during the 2011-12 season. The coaches who directly preceded Rhoades at VCU were Will Wade, Shaka Smart, Anthony Grant, and Jeff Capel.

This year the expectations are high for VCU; it is the culture of the program. The A10 is expected to, again, be a multi-bid league. The pre-season polls have VCU expected to come in third place, which places them squarely on the bubble for Rhoades to make his third NCAA Tournament in his six seasons.

I took the almost three-hour trip up I95 to the campus in the middle of downtown Richmond. I spent a good portion of the day on campus, sitting with the staff, in practice, touring the facilities, and in meetings. The conversation I had with Rhoades was great; he was very open and candid.

Here is part one of the multi-part series from my conversation with VCU head coach Mike Rhoades.

Your path to getting here has been an interesting one. You started as a D-III assistant and were promoted to a D-III head coach, where you saw a lot of success. You move on to be a D-I assistant, and now you’re at your second program, where you’ve been a D-I head coach. I’d like to go through your path, in your words, but not only go through your path but talk about the major stepping stones that you felt, ‘this thing is changing for me.’

I wanted to be a player. I wanted to play; I tried to play overseas and got cut. You know, I probably tried to go to too high of a level right out of school. I got cut and then went home to be a substitute teacher at my high school and junior high. And in my hometown, my uncle was my high school coach.

I was working with my uncle, and I didn’t want to be a teacher, but I wanted to be in the gym every day. So right then and there, my mom pretty much said, ‘What are you going to do?’ I told her I’m going to try to be a college coach. So right there, I was all in. And because I played in the Christmas tournament at Randolph Macon, my senior year in college, I knew coach.

Somebody said there was an opening. We reached out to him, went down for an interview, and got the job to be an assistant coach. Now the best thing is this was more like an apprenticeship because I got to do everything. Unfortunately, Coach (Hal Nunally) wasn’t in great health, so I even did more than a normal assistant. There was even a point where I had to coach some of the games. I mean was in charge of everything, including the budget.

So, at that young age, I learned how to run a program and not just be a coach. Then at 25 years old, he comes into the office and says, ‘My health’s not good. I’m gonna retire.’ I get the job at 25 and coach my first game at 26. Coach Sean McAloon, now the head coach at IMG, was 22 at the time; me and him that was our coaching staff, the two of us.

So, my wife moved down, and we got engaged, and we told each other that we were gonna make this an adventure. That was the one thing I have always said about this job; it’s an adventure. I’ve been on this unbelievable ride, and my wife and I said, we’re gonna make this an adventure, but we’re gonna take it a step further than maybe other people do and make it a big family.

Everybody that plays for us, who sweats for us, and spends that time with us is a part of our family. Now, 27 years later, we have one big family because of it. I spent ten great years as a head coach at Randolph Macon. I mean, I could have stayed there forever. We were winning. I had good players. It was an awesome school; they loved sports there. It was a great place to live.

I just wanted to be at that level where I can compete against the best. I thought if you’re gonna bet on anyone, bet on yourself. I’ve always been that way. I had better job opportunities coming out of Randolph Macon, some low D-I jobs, but I wasn’t going to do that. At that point, I knew I’d have to go be an assistant. I just wanted to work for somebody I knew was going to do things the right way and be about the right stuff. I knew Shaka (Smart), I didn’t know him as well as other people, but knew him, and he knew of us; he was a D-III guy too.

He was aware of me, and he knew what we did at Macon. We hit it off. Now you talk about just the perfect match there with him and our staff, how much fun we had. Nobody there thought they were bigger than the job. Nobody thought they were bigger than each other. And we just had a blast together. Of course, we caught fire our second year, and it opened up opportunities for everybody on the staff to possibly be head coaches.

Five years later, I mean, I was the bridesmaid for a lot of jobs. I was second and third for a lot of jobs at that time, but I took the job at Rice, where people told me not to take it. I was going to bet on myself again and said, ‘Let’s do this.’. And the President there, the Board of Trustees, really wanted me. They wanted me to run a program and try to build it into a winner.

And we went there; it was a hard job. But it was great because I had a staff. The staff we had was all in. We worked our butts off, and the thing at Rice was the first two years, we went through a lot of stuff. We had a lot of injuries, and we really weren’t very good the first year, but we overachieved. But we were doing things the right way, and we put the program before everything else, and we built standards.

By the third year, we got rolling. People didn’t want to play us. We were good. And if we stuck around, we would’ve been even better, but I had an opportunity to come back to VCU.

I’m not sure I would’ve left for a lot of places. I really enjoyed it. We loved living in Houston, but it was VCU, and it’s a basketball school. It’s a place that’s committed. We could play this fun style, and I could recruit guys with a lot of grit, a lot of toughness. Guys that have that ‘I hate to lose’ type of mentality. Those guys fit here at VCU.

It’s been a great six years. We’ve gone through some stuff; we had to fix the morale when I got here. It was broken even though there were wins; it was broken. We went through a bunch of injuries. We went through COVID, but we put guys in the NBA Draft two years in a row.

We’re fighting, we’re playing hard, and we’ve won the regular season. You know, two other years, we’re a half game and one game out. There are a lot of good things going on, but I still think we could continue to. get better, and keep building the standards.

These kids care like you saw practice today. They care, and they’re into it, and they want to be here.

That’s a lot of fun.