Ross Hodge finally takes over at West Virginia after leading North Texas into NIT semifinals
For a week after he was hired at West Virginia, new men's basketball coach Ross Hodge wore two hats.
Hodge stayed on as the coach at North Texas to get the Mean Green prepared to play in the semifinals of the National Invitation Tournament, where they lost to UC Irvine in Indianapolis.
With the transfer portal already open, Hodge also spent considerable time since his March 26 hiring getting familiar with the Mountaineers while working the phones to contact potential recruits. And while campus visits by prospective players along with in-person contact with them stops during the NCAA's one-week 'dead period,' Hodge said he will 'hit the ground running' after April 10.
'This is a blessing and this is an opportunity that I certainly don't take lightly,' Hodge said during his introduction at West Virginia.
It was a more intimate welcome held in a small auditorium compared to predecessor Darian DeVries, who walked out to a much larger crowd at the team's basketball arena that included the school's pep band and cheerleaders when he arrived from Drake a year ago for his only season. DeVries was hired at Indiana.
Hodge did attend West Virginia's home baseball game against archrival Pittsburgh. He got to see firsthand West Virginia's PG-rated rendition of Neil Diamond's 'Sweet Caroline,' which involves a not-so-nice chant aimed at the Panthers.
Hodge mentioned his no-cursing rule in practice because there are other ways to motivate people and said he enforces five pushups upon anyone who does.
'The Hodge household was doing about 500 pushups when we were listening to the Mountaineer version of 'Sweet Caroline,'' he said.
Then, less than six hours before the news conference, tornado warning sirens blared around Morgantown. Hodge said it reminded him of an analogy from his wife, Shelly, that he borrows as an approach to coaching. Shelly Hodge is a Maryland native and an instructor in yoga and Pilates, a series of exercises that in part helps improve flexibility.
'It's the flexible trees that survive storms,' Hodge said. 'The stiff, rigid trees, they break under storms. So you've got to have some flexibility. You've got to be able to evolve. And you can't be so stubborn in a certain way that 'this is how we're going to do things' outside of you are going to play extremely hard, we are going to play together. We're going to play for each other, and there's going to be a connectivity amongst the group.'
Hodge went 46-24 in two seasons as coach of the Mean Green, including 27-9 this season. While Hodge has no NCAA Tournament experience as a head coach, he's been part of staffs that went to three of them, including an upset of Purdue as a No. 13 seed in 2021. Hodge is credited as the architect of the North Texas defense, which had the nation's No. 1 scoring defense in 2021-22 and 2022-23.
This wasn't the first time Hodge had stepped on West Virginia's campus. He was with North Texas when it played at West Virginia's home opener in the 2020-21 season. The Mean Green couldn't hold onto an eight-point halftime lead.
On the day he took the West Virginia job, North Texas barely beat Oklahoma State in the NIT quarterfinals. There was an angst from West Virginia fans who had to wait another week for Hodge to arrive on campus, while also narrowly avoiding the disappointment from Mean Green supporters to the end of a season.
'I thought there for a second I was going to be the only coach in the country to get simultaneously crushed by two fanbases at the same time,' Hodge said.
West Virginia athletic director Wren Baker was the AD from 2016 to 2022 at North Texas, where Hodge was an assistant for six seasons under Grant McCasland, now at Texas Tech. Baker said he was given rave reviews about Hodge both from McCasland and Michigan coach Dusty May, and that Hodge was clear in his desire to 'plant roots and embrace West Virginia.'
Now, he'll guide the Mountaineers through its third straight season of roster makeovers.
'He has great experience in rebuilding, retooling and reloading rosters,' Baker said. 'I'm pleased we found a coach that checked all of our boxes.'
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