Ross Hodge press conference summary: 3-30
West Virginia head coach Ross Hodge addressed the media ahead of the College Basketball Crown and here is a summary of what was said.
–Anytime you get a chance to put on a college uniform and the seniors could tell you how fast those four years ago so anytime you get a chance to represent a university and a state you have to take advantage of those opportunities. The partnership the Big 12 has with FOX is why the Mountaineers are playing in the Crown. This group really does enjoy each other and playing basketball so it makes it an enjoyable experience playing together.
–The portal officially opens the Tuesday after the National Championship Game. The portal is always kind of open but officially the biggest difference is if you were still playing a year ago you could be sacrificing time that you could host official visits but other than collecting names you’re not losing the opportunity to host any visitors.
–Hodge said in his experience he’s been part of a team that won the CBI and if you can win the last game of the year it’s a cool experience because if you think about it there aren’t many coaches or players that get to win the last game of the season. That doesn’t mean you’d trade it for an NCAA appearance but it’s still a unique situation. Just to continue to play it’s hard not to take advantage of those opportunities. If your players don’t want to do it then maybe you have to evaluate it but when you have a group that legitimately wants to keep playing he’s always been on the mindset that you need to honor that.
–To Hodge there are a lot of factors that creep into these deals when it comes to accepting postseason opportunities. Are those teams hurt, do they have players that don’t want to play?
–Hodge said the players that could come back next year could get some more time but you’re playing to win it. You will get a great evaluation tool in practice.
–Hodge said it was unique and time went really fast this year. He hasn’t had a true amount of time to reflect on anything but weirdly enough the slowest time for a college basketball coach is when you get your brand new team in June. That’s when it slows down the most even though you’re learning them. You don’t have some time to reflect on where you are once the season ends because you have to build a roster.
–The first practice back that the team had it felt like a bowl game for football with the time off in-between. This situation allows you to get away a little bit and his players were able to have a true spring break. A lot of the team spent time with each other on spring break and you’re coming off that first week back and get their legs under them and conditioning and now you get into Stanford.
–Hodge doesn’t know the long term prognosis on Amir Jenkins yet, he will have surgery on the left shoulder next Wednesday and then have it on the right one.
–Hodge said you want to be playing in the NCAA Tournament. Hodge is a fan of the game as much as he is a student of the game. You root for your Big 12 counterparts and pull for them and want to see the Big 12 do good. Hodge said this team was five or six possessions from the NCAA Tournament. The games you had a chance to win and you needed to make one more play. If you can get in the tournament that’s where runs open up.
–You’re always looking at evaluation with how you do things. They’ve had those conversations and those are always evolving and ongoing. Even this team if you were just to send the stats for the nine wins and nine losses and even if you took away the Arizona, Iowa State and Houston losses a lot of the time it comes down to putting the ball in the basket.
–Stanford it starts with the freshman guard Ebuka Okorie that has had a level of impact on them. He is dynamic. He wasn’t a great shooter in high school but he has added that to his game. He is fast and gets the other guys involved. Coach Smith does a great job of using him with his gravity.
–Without Jenkins playing, Honor Huff has to play a little more point guard and Morris Ugusuk will get more minutes. You have to let the surgery take place for Jenkins and let the doctors give you an exact recovery timeline. Hodge has had conversations with Jenkins’ family and the doctors and they’ve discussed several different options with them. You truly don’t know until you get in there.
–Hodge said you’re going to lean heavy into the portal because you’re losing experienced players for next year. He wouldn’t rule out the possibility of adding another high school player if they can help right away. You know the positions you’re losing and they have to replace them.
–Coming into college some of the concern was Okorie didn’t shoot it great but he’s really worked on that and went to a situation where he got an opportunity and he’s made the most of it. Hodge doesn’t know him personally but watching Okorie he believes he has an incredible work ethic.
–The financial component for the players is not something they’ve talked much about as a team. It’s kind of sad to say that in two years, the reward went from a good amount of money to inconsequential. That’s sad to say. Hodge’s first job he made $8,000 a year.
–Hodge said he’s started having conversations with the players that can come back and it starts with letting them know you want them to come back. The first step for him is we’d like for you to be back but it’s not always that simple anymore. You can’t really read into anything when people don’t come back anymore because there is not an infinite amount of resources at everyone’s disposal.
–Hodge said they built last year’s roster with the mindset they could make the NCAA Tournament and not only make it but win games in it. They came up short, but they didn’t take advantage of it. Hodge shares in everybody’s frustration. Every decision they make has that in mind to try to reach the goal of the tournament.
–You can’t compare this year to last year in terms of navigating the portal because up until 72 hours prior to going to the NIT everything he thought about was about being at North Texas the recruiting and conversations. Three really good high school players they really like.
–You have to balance experience with some youth. You want to mix in some experience with that in the transfer portal and guys that fit the same mold want to be part of teams and represent the state in a manner that everybody can be proud of when it comes to transfers additions.
–There’s been a ton of talk of the five for five rule which negates that redshirt rule completely. Hodge would like the ability to play some younger guys in an environment like this without it costing them an entire year. It would be nice if you could play a redshirt candidate and it does not cost them in these late year situations. Those things usually come up in the spring.
–There will be some unexpected but there will be a quick hitter and a couple special situations you haven’t seen that come up even when you don’t have three weeks off between games. Most teams, most coaches have tendencies they’re going to stick to.
–There’s pros and cons to everything and one of the pros to the placement of the Crown was that his players did actually get a spring break. There’s a ying and a yang to all of it. With the week off you get a chance to miss it a little bit and appreciate it.
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