MORGANTOWN — There are no crystal balls – just basketballs, as it turns out, – to determine how Ross Hodge will fare as the WVU men’s hoops coach.
As the situation currently stands, he will be the third coach in as many years to make his Power Conference debut with the Mountaineers when WVU hosts Mount St. Mary’s at 7 p.m. Tuesday inside the Hope Coliseum.
Whether Hoss is the coach at WVU for the next 20 years or he simply sticks around for two or three, he will have only one first-ever game at the school.
“I haven’t thought a ton about that or what it could mean,” Hodge said Monday. I know the quote, you never get a second chance to make a first impression, but really my thoughts are around making sure our guys execute and putting our guys into position to have success.”
It is some insight to the 45-year old from Dallas, who 20-some years ago was first cutting his teeth in the business living in a college dorm room making meal money at a junior college in Commerce, Texas.
He’s now in Morgantown making real money, so to speak, but it’s how Hodge talks about those early days that allows one to see his vision for the WVU program.
For so many, living in that cramped dorm room – which sat next to the school’s baseball team, by the way – would be a humbled beginning that would make the majority in a hurry to take the next step toward becoming a major college basketball head coach.
Not Hodge, not exactly.
“To be honest and candid, I can’t even say that was the dream necessarily,” Hodge said. “Me, personally, I legitimately just tried to be as good as I could be wherever I was. When I was an assistant at Paris (Texas), I wasn’t like, ‘Well, I want to be a junior-college head coach.’ When I was there, I wasn’t thinking about being a Division I head coach or assistant.
“I really just tried to pour everything I could into the moment I was in. The one thing I do know about this business, is if you can win, then everyone usually gets the opportunities they’re looking for.”
It wasn’t that Hodge didn’t have dreams or goals. Having ambition and a work ethic were never an issue. It was more along the lines of Hodge having a clear understanding of the here and now and making his current situation better.
Climbing the ladder and all that comes with that was simply nothing more than a passing thought .
“If you spend all your time thinking about how can I be the head coach at West Virginia, you probably will never get the chance to be the head coach at West Virginia,” Hodge said. “If you spend all your time thinking about how you can make your staff great and your players great, that other stuff will usually work itself out.
“For me, I never tried to plan. I wanted to be prepared for when moments arose. For me, I just want to beat Mount St. Mary’s. That’s going to be incredibly challenging.”
So, the first chapter of the Hodge era begins. It starts with a totally rebuilt roster that includes eight transfers, four freshmen and a coach who is defensive-minded and focused on the situation at hand.
Dreams? Yes, Hodge does have dreams, but they are not about climbing ladders.
“I dream about winning championships,” he said. “I allow myself to have those thoughts with this particular group. You have those types of goals. But, I don’t want to win now any more than I did when I was an assistant coach. It’s not like I want to win more now. I get to do this cool stuff and talk to you all, but when I was an assistant, it wasn’t like I wanted to win those games any less or more than I want to win (Tuesday).”
