An honest accounting of everything that went wrong in 2025-26
There's a particular kind of sports disappointment that's worse than being bad. It's being mediocre with expensive ambitions. It's building a roster that looks like a plan on paper, watching it disintegrate in real time, and trying to figure out exactly where the wheels came off. That's what ODU men's basketball gave its fans in 2025-26 — a 12-21 season that sits 254th in the NET rankings, 11th out of 14 teams in the Sun Belt, and ended in the second round of the conference tournament when Jordan Battle scored 45 points and still lost.
Let's go through it piece by piece, honestly, because this program and its fans deserve more than a press release.
The Setup: Genuine Optimism Was Warranted
Mike Jones's first season in 2024-25 ended with ODU at 15-20 overall, but the Monarchs pulled off a nice little Sun Belt Tournament run — winning three games in three nights as a 10-seed, beating Louisiana, Texas State on a last-second Robert Davis Jr. three-pointer, and App State, before finally running out of gas against Troy.
That run created a little bit of goodwill and some recruiting leverage. ODU's transfer portal class was ranked among the better classes in the Sun Belt and the Monarchs led the conference in retained talent — holding on to three starters, which no other program in the league matched.
The Monarchs were picked to finish fifth in the Preseason Coaches Poll, receiving two first-place votes. Robert Davis Jr. was named the Sun Belt Preseason Player of the Year. This wasn't empty hype. Davis Jr. had put up some impressive numbers in 2024-25 — leading the country with 348 three-point attempts, finishing fifth nationally with 3.41 three-pointers per game, and eighth in Division I with 116 made threes, a new program record.
On paper, the pieces were there. In practice, almost nothing worked the way it was supposed to.
Problem One: The Preseason Player of the Year Disappeared
This is the most obvious storyline of the season. Robert Davis Jr. came into 2025-26 as the preseason conference Player of the Year — the guy the whole offense was supposed to run through, the shooter that every new transfer was theoretically going to complement.
By late December, Davis Jr. was scoring 9.0 points per game. The guy who led the country in three-point attempts the year before, who averaged 15.6 points per game, who hit a game-winner on ESPN to send ODU to the quarterfinals, was producing at barely half that rate two months into the season.
By the time the Sun Belt Tournament arrived, ODU's top three scorers were KC Shaw at 17.1 ppg, Jordan Battle at 14.6 ppg, and LJ Thomas at 11.4 ppg, with Davis Jr. not even mentioned in the headline scoring group. A preseason Player of the Year who's not in his team's top three scorers by March is more than a disappointment. It's a blaring red flag.
What happened? The honest answer is that Davis Jr.'s entire game is built on volume three-point shooting. In 2024-25 he shot 34.7% from the field and 33.3% from three, not efficient numbers, but sustainable when you're attempting 10 threes a night and the team doesn't have anyone else taking those shots. In 2025-26, ODU brought in Battle (a career 42.7% three-point shooter from Coastal Carolina), Turner (41.6% career three-point shooter), and Shaw. Suddenly Davis Jr. wasn't the only shooter on the floor, and without the volume, the things that made him look like a star evaporated.
Building a roster around a high-volume, low-efficiency shooter and then adding multiple other shooters without adjusting the identity of the offense is a roster construction problem. Davis Jr. didn't just get worse. He got crowded out of the system that made him look good.
Problem Two: The LJ Thomas Injury Nobody Talked About Enough
ODU was without LJ Thomas, their second-leading scorer, for multiple games in December with an injury, and that disruption came at a critical moment in the season when the Monarchs were trying to build chemistry and establish an identity. Thomas had averaged 14.2 points and 3.9 assists per game at Austin Peay, and he was supposed to be the connector — the playmaking guard who could both score and set others up. When he went down, ODU had no real backup plan at that position.
Thomas finished the season at 11.4 ppg, a functional number, but significantly below what the roster was built expecting from him. A full, healthy Thomas season might not have changed the final record dramatically, but it was another domino that fell in the wrong direction.
Problem Three: Roster Redundancy and a Real Lack of Size
Look at who ODU brought in this offseason: Battle (6-2 guard/wing shooter), Shaw (6-5 guard/scorer), Thomas (6-4 guard/playmaker), Turner (6-8 wing shooter), McKenna (6-8 wing forward). With returners Swanton-Rodger and Walker already on the roster, the plan was to build around perimeter shooting and versatility.
The problem is that five of ODU's key contributors were guards or wings who needed the ball to be effective. When shots weren't falling — and they often weren't, with the team shooting 34.0% from three and 44.2% from the field for the season — there was no interior game to fall back on. Caelum Swanton-Rodger led the team with 149 rebounds and averaged 8.4 points per game, solid numbers for a reserve, but not what you need from your only legitimate big in a conference that wears on teams without post presence.
Drew McKenna, the former Georgetown forward who was a highly-regarded recruit, made just two starts in 20 games for the Hoyas before transferring to ODU. He barely registered in the rotation. A player brought in with the pedigree of a top-40 recruit becoming a non-factor is another bullet point in the "things that didn't work" list.
Problem Four: The Turnover Problem Was Never Fixed
In a December loss to Coastal Carolina, ODU turned the ball over 13 times leading to 18 Coastal points, including four turnovers in the final 5:53 of a game they had the lead in. Old Dominion Athletics Sound familiar? In the final game of the season against Georgia Southern, ODU committed 11 turnovers that led to 21 Georgia Southern points — and Shaw alone accounted for 5 of them. The Monarchs were outscored 17-5 in fast break points in that game, which is not a defense problem. That's a possession problem.
A team that can't take care of the basketball against a team playing up-tempo is always going to be in trouble, and this issue showed up in December and showed up again in March.
Problem Five: The NET Tells the Story
ODU finished their season at 254th in the NET rankings — a metric that accounts for results, margin of victory, strength of schedule, and quality of wins. There are 364 Division I programs. Being 253rd means ODU was, by the most comprehensive measure of team quality available, a bottom-third program in the country. The preseason coaches poll had them fifth in the Sun Belt. They finished 11th, were outscored by an average of 1.9 points per game, allowing 77.5 points while scoring 75.6.
You cannot spend at the top of your conference on roster construction and finish in the bottom third of Division I basketball without serious questions about how those decisions were made.
The Final Image: Jordan Battle's 45 Points
In the last game of the 2025-26 season, Jordan Battle went 11-of-18 from the field, 8-of-10 from three, made 15 of 16 free throws, and scored 45 points. His true shooting percentage for the game was 89.9%. That is a historically efficient offensive performance by any standard.
ODU lost 88-84.
Battle was the best thing about this season — a hometown kid from Norfolk who transferred home from Coastal Carolina and led the team with 69 three-pointers, shot 42.2% from three in conference play, and ranked second in the league at 84.6% from the free throw line. He was everything the recruiting pitch promised. He deserved better in the moments that mattered.
The 45-point loss isn't just a heartbreaking final image. It's the season summarized. One guy left to carry everything, a roster that couldn't hold up its end, and a final score that doesn't reflect how good the talent on the floor was.
What Comes Next
12-21 in year two — with an expensive transfer portal class, a preseason Player of the Year, and genuine expectations — is a significant step in the wrong direction that demands honest evaluation of the roster-building process. The redundancy of guards and wings without a reliable interior game isn’t a case of bad luck. It was a critical roster construction problem.
The portal opens again. Most of this group moves on. The next recruiting cycle will say a lot about whether the right lessons were learned here.
ODU fans have grown impatient. Seven years since the NCAA Tournament, and counting.