Byline: Senior College Basketball Writer
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — With 9:09 remaining in Virginia’s ACC tournament quarterfinal against NC State, the whistle blew, and the pressure shifted from the players on the court to a man seated behind the bench with an iPad.
The call was goaltending against the Cavaliers, cutting their 11-point lead to nine. Virginia’s bench erupted. Assistant coach Griff Aldrich insisted defender Thijs De Ridder had blocked the shot cleanly off the shooter’s hand—which by rule would nullify the goaltend.
Head coach Ryan Odom did what he always does on questionable calls: he glared toward Matt Hart.
Seated directly behind the head coach’s chair, Hart kept his head buried in the iPad, his finger dancing across the screen—a swirl here, a tap there. Within 10 seconds, he had reviewed the play from multiple angles. Without looking up, he raised his index finger and twirled it.
That was all Odom needed.
“Any call that looks close, he’ll kind of turn to me,” Hart explained. “He doesn’t have to say anything. I’m already looking to see, and he trusts whatever I say. If I say ‘challenge,’ he’ll do it. If I say no, he won’t.”
Hart is officially Virginia’s director of analytics, a behind-the-scenes role focused on finding advantages hidden in the numbers. But this March, his job takes on a much more public dimension.
For the first time in NCAA tournament history, coaches have the option to challenge a limited range of referee’s calls using a timeout. The challengeable calls include out-of-bounds plays, goaltending and basket interference, and whether a defender’s feet were inside the restricted area on block-charge calls.
If the coach is correct, they retain the ability to use a second challenge. If they’re wrong, it’s gone.
The range of challengeable calls in college remains more limited than the NBA’s, but the stakes are no less significant. At some point during March Madness, a request for instant replay could determine who advances—and who goes home.
Which means someone like Hart—or the 67 others filling similar roles across the tournament—could become an unlikely hero.
Or a goat.
‘I Love It’
Hart has reason to be confident. Virginia has lost only one challenge all season, during an early-season blowout with “no stakes at all,” he said. The Cavaliers would actually prefer a more expansive replay system, in part because Hart has proven so reliable at his job.
For a program constantly seeking marginal edges, a well-timed challenge represents exactly the kind of advantage Virginia believes it can exploit.
“I think we all like it,” Odom told Yahoo Sports. “I would rather it be exactly like the NBA and be able to challenge other stuff. I think it’ll happen in due time. You kind of have to baby step some of this stuff.”
Against NC State, the challenged goaltending call resulted in two points coming off the board in what became an 81-74 Virginia win. It was exactly the kind of sequence the NCAA envisioned when implementing the rule.
Why the Rule Changed
The NCAA added the coach’s challenge this season partly to reduce the number of times officials went to the monitor. Previously, referees would review almost every close out-of-bounds call in the final two minutes—well-intentioned, but prone to bogging down game endings with forensic examinations of which fingertip last touched the ball.
Under the new rules, officials can only initiate reviews in the last two minutes on goaltending or charge circle calls. For out-of-bounds questions, the coach must use a challenge—introducing real strategy around when and how to deploy it.
ACC senior vice president for men’s basketball Paul Brazeau said officials have been instructed to take an extra few seconds on close plays to give benches time to make challenge decisions.
The Analytics Behind the Decision
Hart, who averaged 4.0 points in two seasons at George Washington and played briefly overseas, joined Odom’s staff at Utah State in 2022 through a mutual friend. When Odom moved to VCU, Hart came along as director of analytics, where part of his job involved monitoring games via iPad and tagging plays for halftime review.
That made for a smooth transition when the challenge system arrived via DVSport, whose software allows Hart to track games with minimal delay—typically just two seconds.
Before the season, Hart consulted with NBA counterparts and studied analytics suggesting challenges hold greater value the closer the game gets to its conclusion.
“Each possession is worth more when you get down to one minute, two minutes,” Hart said. “So we’d only use it in the first half if you’re 100 percent positive. If it’s questionable, it’s not worth it.”
Virginia has also collected data showing roughly 90 percent of challengeable calls are out-of-bounds plays, and 75 percent occur on the baselines. Hart now watches games almost exclusively via the baseline camera angle to speed up his review process. He has access to six different camera angles with a simple finger swipe.
Trust and Responsibility
Not every coach handles challenges the same way. Duke’s Jon Scheyer, for instance, will ask video coordinator Trevor Marcus for input but often wants to see the play himself before signaling.
That’s understandable, given that head coaches bear ultimate responsibility for timeout management regardless of whether a challenge succeeds. In the NCAA tournament, the consequences are magnified. A misspent challenge—or failing to challenge a bad call—could end someone’s season.
Odom has complete faith in Hart’s judgment.
“He just tells me yes or no pretty quick,” Odom said. “He does the best he can. If he’s unsure, he’ll [shake his head no]. But there have been times where officials have told me, ‘I think I got that one right’ but [Hart] was right, actually.”
The Stakes Ahead
Virginia’s ACC tournament run ended with a 74-70 loss to Duke in the final, but the Cavaliers enter the NCAA tournament as a No. 3 seed in the Midwest Region, set to face Wright State on Friday.
When they take the court, Hart will be in his usual spot, iPad ready, watching baseline angles and waiting for Odom’s glance. The spotlight will be brighter than anything he experienced in the regular season or conference tournament.
“I’ve never been in a situation where I felt horrible that we lost one,” Hart said. “But the players all know that’s my job so when we get one right, it’s cool, they shout my name, and Ryan has been really awesome about trusting me.”
For Virginia—and every other team in the field—that trust could be the difference between advancing and going home.
