Dave Odom lost his fans at South Carolina. It's their loss, not his.

Odom's long and illustrious coaching career will come to a logical conclusion at the end of this season. The classiest basketball coach you will ever see came to that realization on his own. He didn't needed a bunch of idiots to tell him that.

Fans, of course, are entitled to their opinions, and Odom is just the latest in a long list of coaches to fall out of favor with a booster base wanting more. That doesn't excuse the venom that has been spewed at Odom in an arena where his team deserves unqualified support.

"I think if you take me out of the equation, the voices of dissent can now use their energy in total support of our basketball team," Odom said when he announced his pending retirement.

Pure class. Frankly, I don't care what anybody thinks of Odom as a basketball coach. As a person, he is exemplary. As a person in the coaching ranks, he is one of a kind.

I have known Odom since he was an assistant coach at Virginia in 1982, and he was immediately likeable. In the 25 years since, that initial respect has only grown.

And he's a good coach. Some of his Wake Forest teams were amazing. His South Carolina experience, however, didn't go as well. For seven seasons he's cobbled together squads that have failed to inspire more than a couple of NIT titles and one NCAA Tournament appearance. It's not enough, and he knows that.

But that doesn't diminish Odom. Former Silver Bluff and South Carolina star Brandon Wallace understands what these Gamecocks will soon be missing.

"Enjoy it while it lasts because you will never find another coach like him," Wallace said.

Odom has never been a man of few words. Any Q&A with him leans heavier on the answers than the questions. You come to appreciate a subject willing to elaborate in the journalism business.

So it comes as no surprise that when Odom announced his retirement, he wasn't going to pull out the stock script used by most coaches when the door is leaning a little heavy on their backsides.

No, Odom used his platform to continue doing what he does best -- teach. It may be the best coaching he's done all season.

"I have a unique opportunity at this point to make a huge impact on the future of Gamecock basketball," he said. "I'm not telling you what you want to hear. I'm telling you what needs to be heard."

Odom was speaking to Gamecocks fans, and they should do themselves a favor and listen to the message.

"I'm on the back end not only of my career, but also my life," said the 65-year-old coach. "But it's not over. There are still things to do, people to affect, a team to minister to. There are things to learn, there are objectives to attain, there are goals to accomplish. By all that is holy, we are going to get after that."

Odom has experienced the best that college basketball has to offer. When he arrived at Virginia, Ralph Sampson was the star attraction on a team that was the unifying feature on the college campus. Students camped out overnight to get seats inside University Hall for every single game.

In the ACC, the atmosphere in places such as Cameron Indoor Stadium, Carmichael Auditorium, Reynolds Coliseum and Cole Field House were the pulse of the best college basketball in the nation. While most schools moved into newer arenas, the energy still remained.

And Odom has experienced that same energy in other outposts around the Southeastern Conference. He felt it this season in places like Vanderbilt's Memorial Gymnasium and Arkansas's Bud Walton Arena -- places Odom called "electric beyond words." On the road, his players stepped up to the challenge.

"They took the whole crowd on," he said.

That atmosphere doesn't exist at the Colonial Center, where the home team shouldn't have to take on the crowd. Part of that is because South Carolina, much like Georgia, has a fan base that thinks football first and celebrates basketball in fair weather.

Much of that, however, is because Odom lost the faith of the fans and did not build them a foundation worth getting excited about.

"I didn't feel that the arena was excited to see our team play," he said. "More than that, I didn't feel that the arena was excited to help our team play."

In college basketball, that is critical. So Odom treated himself like a cancer and carved it out. Now he wants the fans who show up at the Colonial Center to focus only on the uniform and give the bodies inside it the support they deserve.

"It's about giving our players the best chance and place to feel that atmosphere," he said. "Because it is here. It's in this state. There is no passion like the passion for the Gamecocks. I just feel that the best way for our team to feel that is for me to remove any clouds that might impair the visions of those that love the Gamecocks and let them know that their voice should be heard in a positive way. ... We have to have everybody pulling for our guys and not against me."

Some of the fans who have pulled the "boo" from boorish instead of booster and let their screeching be heard will doubtless feel they've done the program a service by running Odom into retirement. That, as Odom said, "could not be further from the truth."

Odom is selflessly taking himself out of the equation. The roots of his pending retirement were planted before the season and before the fans expressed their dissatisfaction. He didn't feel it and tried to force it one more year, believing his love for the players and the game would be enough to lift them all up.

It wasn't, and he chose to leave on his own dignified terms.

But not before Odom finishes what he started and tries to turn a dreary Gamecock season into something better. The fans might have given up on him, but he won't give up on them or his team.

That's what good coaches do. And whether you believe Odom is good enough is immaterial.

"I expect our team to play at a high level," he said, not yielding anything in the face of adversity. "They owe it to themselves and they owe it to the Gamecock fans and they owe it to this university.

"In return, our fans owe it to (the players) as well."

Listen to the man and you might just learn something before he leaves.