Street Knowledge With Chris Graham

You might remember, I was on top of the UVA Basketball coach search from the get-go, being the first to tell you, among other things, way back in December, that Ryan Odom was one of the top candidates getting a look from the powers-that-be. I only know that kind of stuff because people in the know tell me that kind of stuff. I wish I was just that smart intuitively. Nope. Have you noticed that I haven’t had a lot to offer lately on the transfer portal? It’s because the people in the know don’t know, either, why the flow of guys into the program has come to a halt.

There is talk in the industry about former UVA Basketball coach Tony Bennett being a possible target for the San Antonio Spurs, who don’t exactly have an official opening right now, but the writing seems to be on the wall, with respect to Gregg Popovich. I can argue a million reasons why I don’t see Bennett-to-San Antonio happening, but still, this story has traction behind the scenes.

Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, in the first week of the Senate’s two-week recess, risked his life to try to bring home Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Virginia’s senior senator, Mark Warner has been puttering around the state doing grip-and-grins with locals around the occasional roundtable discussion with important people in business suits. Tim Kaine, the junior senator, spent the week in Europe. He did make a stop in Ukraine, which is something. Advantage: yeah, obviously, Chris Van Hollen.

MAGA Gov. Glenn Youngkin is claiming that an outfit called the Virginia Homeland Security Task Force has made more than 500 arrests as of Monday, though the governor’s office isn’t able to give us much detail on the nature of the arrests.

Are White MAGA voters in Virginia ready to cast their lots with a Black immigrant woman for governor, a gay White man for lieutenant governor, and a Latino for attorney general? Have to wonder how Democrats are going to play this in the fall. I mean, it’s the MAGAs who are the anti-“woke,” anti-DEI crowd. This one seems to be playing into Democrats’ hands, big time.

Whiny White liberals are complaining to me about how they felt penned in at a local protest in Staunton on Saturday. My message: one, stop being a whiny White liberal. Seriously, not a good look. Your problems with being protected from people who would rather run you over with a truck as they would spit on you are what we call First World problems. Two, and this one should be obvious: if you want to take your protest to other people and to elected leaders, you don’t need anybody’s permission.

A magistrate has issued an arrest warrant for the driver in the “rolling coal” incident that disrupted an April 5 protest rally in front of the Augusta County Courthouse in Staunton. It literally took me swearing out a complaint and presenting evidence to the magistrate on Tuesday to get this to happen, because Staunton Police had no interest in the case. Jeffrey Wayne Armentrout, the owner of the Staunton-based Armentrout Towing/Old Dixie Towing, was identified as the driver of the 2000 Ford Bronco F-350 with neo-Nazi insignia on the front bumper that blew a tower of smoke through a modified smokestack located in the bed of the truck, then drove at a high rate of speed and squealed tires past the rally site on West Johnson Street around 12:40 p.m. on April 5.   Story link: click here.

#TeamAFP staff writer Rod Mullins spent the weekend down at Bristol Motor Speedway, where he was witness to a historic weekend of dominance from Kyle Larson, who won two of the three races, and was second in the third. As much fun as that was, Rod, a lifelong Cincinnati Reds fan, was able to talk for a few minutes with Baseball Hall of Famer Johnny Bench, who was one of the marshals for Sunday’s Cup Series race, and was also on hand to help promote the Aug. 2 game between the Reds and Atlanta Braves that will be played at Bristol Motor Speedway in front of what is expected to be a record crowd. Among the items that came up in the interview with Bench was the subject of some of his Reds teammates left out of the Hall of Fame – Rod asked specifically about Vada Pinson and Dave Concepcion. So, NASCAR and baseball.

NASCAR will settle in at Bristol Motor Speedway this weekend for racing action that will begin Friday night with the Craftsman Truck Series. #TeamAFP’s Rod Mullins will carry the Augusta Free Press flag for us at Bristol this weekend. Rod joins the “Street Knowledge” podcast to get us ready for the short-track mayhem.

Ryan Odom is getting heat for the mass exodus from the UVA Basketball program, but the reality is, the Tony Bennett/Ron Sanchez guys that are leaving aren’t fits in the new Odom system. Let me break it down for you, with analysis of the six commits that Odom has been able to pick up from the transfer portal and the April prep signing window.

Staunton Police confirmed that they are investigating a reported incident involving a man with a gun at the April 5 Hands Off! protest rally, and one of the witnesses to the incident told AFP on Wednesday that he intends to press charges against the man.

The search is over, and UVA Basketball has its guy, Ryan Odom, who was introduced to the world on Monday with a public press conference at JPJ. Odom said hello by offering the observation “I love offense,” and that he want to “play fast,” which might take some getting used to by the Embrace the Pace set.

The timestamp on the email from the UVA Basketball SID announcing that the school was cutting ties with Ron Sanchez was 5:00 p.m. ET on the dot. #TeamAFP’s Scott German noted that the FlightAware flight-tracking app had the team in the air over the Virginia-North Carolina border as the email was going out. Sanchez didn’t learn his fate by email in the air or when the plane landed in Charlottesville, in case you were wondering. Our contacts down in Charlotte described the scene after Virginia’s 66-60 loss to Georgia Tech that bounced the ‘Hoos from the ACC Tournament and ended the 2024-2025 season. From what we were told, Sanchez was ushered into a room ahead of his postgame presser for a quick meeting. We don’t know who else was in the room, but we can presume it was the athletics director, Carla Williams. Sanchez was later than usual to the presser, and from a look at the video on YouTube, and a read of the transcript, he knew what was up.

There are two stories to follow right now with UVA Basketball – the season, which is now down to whatever happens in the ACC Tournament, and the coach search, which is at the end stages on a different time frame. Today’s podcast tries to dive into both. I start with a look ahead to Wednesday’s second-round ACC Tournament 8-9 game between UVA and Georgia Tech. Then we shift to the latest in the coach search, which has had a ton of developments in just the past couple of days.

The gloves are off at NASCAR headquarters, with news breaking that the racing giant has filed a countersuit against 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports, which initiated action against NASCAR last year over the terms of the new team charters. Rod Mullins, our NASCAR beat writer, joined the show to help me break down the particulars to the latest move in this back-and-forth. Rod also reviews Christopher Bell’s win from Sunday in Texas, and gets us ready for this weekend in Phoenix.

The search committee that has been vetting candidates for the open UVA Basketball coaching job is in crunch time. We know who the top candidates are now, but of course there are so many variables at play. I had Scott German on with me on today’s podcast to break down the latest of what we know, which is a lot – that the search is revolving around, for now, at least, Marquette coach Shaka Smart and VCU coach Ryan Odom. Among the issues: we’re still weeks away from being able to get anybody to sign on the bottom line. In the pod, we examine the factors at play in getting the search to where it is now, and what can happen between now and thereabouts of April 1 that can lead to one or the other of the top candidates getting the job, or there being a need to get to a fallback candidate.

Rod Mullins, our NASCAR beat writer, joins “Street Knowledge” to review Christopher Bell’s OT win in Atlanta, and to help get us ready for this weekend in Texas. The meat of the podcast this week is on the topic of TV ratings: for the Cup Series, Xfinity Series and the Truck Series, with an eye toward what NASCAR will do in the next couple of years to address its TV rights. We wrap the show with news out of Southwest Virginia. Rod is also the editor of Dickenson Media, and we chatted about flooding in the Tri-State area, and the lack of action from the Trump administration on requests for disaster declarations in Virginia and West Virginia.

Ron Sanchez is the interim coach with the UVA Basketball program, but there’s some momentum toward Sanchez being a serious candidate to get the job on a full-time basis. I go into detail about what we’re hearing on the Sanchez candidacy in this podcast, and also share what I learned from the look at the contracts of Virginia Tech basketball coach Mike Young and Hokies football coach Brent Pry.

A busy couple of days for UVA Basketball, with the loss at home to Virginia Tech at the buzzer on Saturday, then the quick turnaround for a road trip to Pitt. The ‘Hoos dominated the NCAA Tournament aspirant, winning 73-57 in a game that was essentially over at halftime. We break down how UVA did it, ahead of talking through the news coming up the rest of this week with the wrap on the winter recruiting season for UVA Football.

DEI – diversity, equity, inclusion – is “immoral,” per Donald Trump, a White man born into millions whose father bought him an Ivy League degree and gave him a $400 million head start in the business world. Your first indication that U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., is planning to run for re-election in 2026: he voted for the Laken Riley Act, the pretend get-tough-on-immigration bill that will allow the Trump administration to go after DACAs and people under Temporary Protected Status protections. We finally heard from our MAGA congressman, Ben Cline, on the issue of President Trump’s inexcusable pardons of the 1,500 J6ers who tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election to keep their Dear Leader in power.