Hopes are high for cagers | News, Sports, Jobs

Hodge

MORGANTOWN — Here we go again.

It’s turning late October, a time to load up on candy by the door, a time to bring out the sweaters and the jackets, a time to stay up late watching World Series baseball games.

In a normal October we’re caught up in a race toward a bowl game with the West Virginia football team, but there is no longer anything normal in college sports, so these have become hard times on the football field.

That, of course, is a negative pull on a city and state where football is king, but the negativity that has been growing turns to positivity as we wake up one morning and Big 12 men’s basketball Media Day is upon us.

As it was in football, WVU is starting over in basketball but this is different.

For the fourth year in a row there’s a new head coach looking to stabilize what had become an insane run of coaching misfortune, from the rocky events that led to Hall of Fame Bob Huggins departure to a bottom out interim year of Josh Eilert to a promising season under Darian DeVries that ended with his stunning defection to coach Indiana taking his son, Tucker, with him.

Ross Hodge was hired. It is an unfamiliar name, unfamiliar outside the inner circles of college basketball where he successfully built a reputation as coach on a lower level, but who was scooped up by WVU Athletic Director Wren Baker from North Texas.

Who is Ross Hodge? Is there a word that describes him?

At Media Day, before the ESPN cameras, one of his top transfers, senior Honor Huff, was asked that question and quickly offered up one word.

“Gritty.”

He may not be a West Virginian, but he certainly behaves like one.

“Everything he wants us to do is gritty,” Huff went on. “You got to work for it. He always says, ‘Don’t get tired of kicking people’s tails and don’t get tired of making shots.’”

And that’s exactly what Hodge saw in Huff.

“Honor does it every day in practice, so it’s not a surprise when you see him go out and make 7 or 8 3s in a game. He’s got a great personality and is selfless. He’s experienced winning and winning at the highest level, winning an NIT championship and making big shots in that.”

He even amazes his teammates.

“I didn’t think you could do these things in real life until I had seen Honor,” big man Brenen Lorient said. “His game looks very video-gamish. It’s crazy every day.”

So, what drew Hodge to WVU beyond the paycheck and the idea of coaching in the Big 12?

“It starts with the history and the tradition,” Hodge explained. “Obviously, the most recognizable figure in basketball is the NBA logo of Jerry West. Being a fan myself, growing up and watching coach (John) Beilein’s teams with Kevin Pittsnogle, it was really a revolutionary time period when you think about it now.

“Stretch 5 men were everywhere. During that time period, it was one of the first.”

Indeed, it helped change the game but it was the evolution of WVU basketball. It began maybe earlier when Hot Rod Hundley put the heat into the game and turned it from a rather boring two-handed set-short competition into an entertainment medium that now is taking over the world through the college and pro game.

But there was more.

“There was what coach Huggins did there; the administration and the people of West Virginia,” Hodge continued. “They are people I relate to and people who will appreciate the style of play that we play. They have a great home court advantage, one of the best in the country.

“You add that all together and it’s a recipe for success.”

By taking the job, of course, Ross Hodge became the basketball face of the state. His roster is brand new, so there is no carryover on the roster.

He takes the pass from Hundley and West and Beilein and Pittsnogle and Huggins. There is no Celtics or Red Sox, Knicks or Yankees, no Nuggets or Rockies and no Lakers or Dodgers.

He is the coach of the state’s team.

This is not North Texas.

“People ask about the change, but basketball is basketball, ” Hodge said. “There’s great players, great coaches, great venues in this league. Yes, there was relative anonymity where I was, but the people are incredible people.

“They are loyal, they are hard-working, blue-collar people. They love the Mountaineers, they love West Virginia.”

And, they are starved for a winning team, a conference contender, a tournament team capable of making a deep run.

“They have been extremely welcoming to myself and my family from the moment we got there,” Hodge said. “They are passionate, loyal and hungry for West Virginia basketball to get back to where it has been.”

He picks up where Rich Rodriguez in football left off, trying to recreate the success of the past, only it comes with far less pressure, far less of a rebuilding job even though he is starting completely over.

He doesn’t have to break in 81 new players. His game is not as treacherous as football, so one might expect that maybe some of his best players will be able to play everyday, unlike the injury bug that has kept biting away at the football team.

His players are not big names in the college game, which makes them underdogs going into a conference like the Big 12, but that fits everything that is West Virginia.

And, he believes, he comes into the league with players who have experienced winning, players like Huff, who may be only 5-10 and 170 pounds but who comes in with a ring from an NIT championship and with a reputation as a 3-point sniper that led the nation last year in 3-point field goals.

He brought two of his own players from North Texas and gathered a team that mixes experience of seven seniors and a junior with seven freshmen.

This is an era of fluidity for players.

“If you can bring three or four guys back from one year to the next in this landscape of college basketball, you feel like you have your whole team back,” Hodge said. “But to bring your point guard, like Jasper Floyd, who has some of the best intangibles of anyone I’ve ever been around, and to bring Brenen Lorient, who was a first-team all-league player in the American who continued to get better, is huge because it helps you communicate to the others what’s expected.

“And you look at the rest of the roster, what we tried to do was identify people who have been part of winning programs and who know what winning is. Now we’re just trying to assimilate the group and trying to figure out how we are going to win together.

“But,” he added, “you don’t have to teach them how to win.”