The Pepperdine Waves are starting over — and this time, the hire tells you everything about the ambition. On March 26, 2026, Pepperdine named Griff Aldrich its next head men's basketball coach, plucking the Virginia associate head coach after one season in Charlottesville. Aldrich, 51, is one of the great program-builders of the last decade: 127-100 in seven seasons at Longwood, where he delivered the Lancers' first two Division I NCAA Tournament bids in 2022 and 2024, and part of Ryan Odom's staff that engineered one of the nation's biggest turnarounds at Virginia — a 30-6 season that ended in the NCAA second round. 'We were looking for a leader who could build something meaningful and sustainable,' said athletic director Tanner Gardner. 'Griff's passion for developing young men, his proven ability to transform programs, and his alignment with our mission make him the right person.'
Aldrich's story is the story of the hire. He's a Virginia Law School graduate who spent 16 years in the private sector — a partner at the Houston law firm Vinson & Elkins advising on mergers, acquisitions, capital markets, and private equity, then the founder of his own company and the managing director and CFO of an energy company. In 2016, he walked away from it all to join Odom's staff at UMBC as a 40-something rookie assistant. A decade later, he's the man Pepperdine trusts to end a 24-year NCAA Tournament drought — the program hasn't danced since 2002, when Paul Westphal was the coach.
He replaces Ed Schilling, fired March 9 after a 22-45 record (8-28 in the WCC) across two seasons. The 2025-26 campaign was brutal — by early February the Waves were 6-19 and 1-11 in league play — and Aldrich has responded with a total roster transformation: two returners alongside 13 newcomers, including seven transfers with NCAA experience and six freshmen, four of them international.
What's happening now is a global talent infusion. The veterans: 6-foot-3 graduate guard Will McClendon, the Sacramento native who started at UCLA and played at San Jose State and North Texas; 6-foot-10 senior Anthony Robinson (Virginia and Xavier); 6-foot-1 senior Jahari Williamson (Valparaiso, Niagara, Kent State); 6-foot-4 graduate guard David Mager; and 6-foot-9 Dutch graduate forward Youri Fritz (Canisius, Northeastern). The newcomers: 6-foot-4 Butler transfer Evan Haywood; 6-foot-8 junior Petar Majstorovic (Syracuse, Long Beach State); 6-foot-8 Stonehill graduate Ethan Meuser; freshmen Oren Sahar (Tel Aviv, via Maccabi Tel Aviv), Dontae Russo-Nance (Auckland, New Zealand), Faruk Biberovic (Zenica, Bosnia, via Fenerbahçe), Alex Constanza (Miami, via Spire Academy), Oliver Kanden (Finland), and Colin Chou (Los Altos); plus sophomore guard Anto Balian. It's a roster with size, skill, and shooting — and a staff to match: associate head coach Dan Engelstad, the former Mount St. Mary's head coach who took the Mountaineers to the 2021 NCAA Tournament, plus assistants from the NBA, high-major, and prep ranks.
The setting remains one of college basketball's great backdrops. Firestone Fieldhouse — opened in 1973, tucked into the Malibu hills above the Pacific — gives the Waves the most scenic home court in America. And the future has a new landmark: 'The Mountain,' a new pregame and hospitality venue at Mullin Park opening December 5, giving season-ticket holders and donors a new home base on game days. For a program trying to build something sustainable, the infrastructure is being built in real time.
Pepperdine's basketball history has real peaks. The 1962 team reached the Sweet 16. The 1976 team — with a young Dennis Johnson, the future Celtics Hall of Famer — did it again. The Tom Asbury era (1985-88) made the Waves a West Coast power, winning conference titles and reaching the NCAAs with a bruising, disciplined style. Jim Harrick's teams in 1999-2001 kept the program relevant nationally. And the university's athletic department has won 10 NCAA Division I team championships — this is a school that knows what winning looks like, just not lately in men's basketball.
The drought is the story: 24 years without an NCAA bid, in a league that keeps producing them. But Aldrich has made a career of ending exactly this kind of drought — at Longwood, at UMBC as an assistant, at Virginia. His pitch is culture, development, and relentless work ethic, wrapped in Pepperdine's mission of faith, academics, and excellence. In Malibu, with the ocean behind the arena and a brand-new roster in front of him, Griff Aldrich gets to build his championship-caliber program from scratch. The Waves have never had a better story to sell — or a better storyteller to sell it.
For Malibu, the timing couldn't be better. The Waves open the Griff Aldrich era with a roster full of new faces, a new staff with NBA and high-major pedigree, and a new gathering place in The Mountain opening December 5. The WCC is as deep as ever, and nobody's picking Pepperdine to do anything in year one. But Aldrich has heard that before — at Longwood, at UMBC, at Virginia. He keeps turning skeptics into believers. In Malibu, with the Pacific glittering behind Firestone Fieldhouse, the Waves are betting that the next believers will be wearing blue and orange.