Miles Sadler’s arrival sparked news strengths for Ross Hodge to explore
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MORGANTOWN - A quick smile breaks out over Miles Sadler, as he attempts to give the generalized version of the conversation he had with WVU men's basketball coach Ross Hodge on the finer points of rebounding the ball.
"Just get on the glass, that's what he definitely told me," Sadler said. "The guards have to rebound better."
That's when Hodge leans over, "You can tell them exactly what I said."
Sadler obliges, "He said zero rebounds is unacceptable and it's not even respectable."
While Sadler enters his freshman season as a highly regarded 5-star prospect and with the type of recruiting credentials few other WVU freshmen have had before him, there is no kid-gloves routine between Hodge and his star pupil.
That was evident over the rebounding conversation, when Sadler came out of the Mountaineers' exhibition loss against Maryland two weeks ago with no boards.
There also is an obvious bond between the two, one that shares some back and forth and reaches beyond the expected roles of a young player with NBA aspirations and a coach who has promised to do everything possible to get him there.
Sadler followed that zero-rebound performance by grabbing six rebounds last week against Glenville State.
"I think six is better than none," Sadler jokes, as he leans over toward Hodge to look at the box score. "I think two of them were offensive, yeah, two of them were."
Hodge: "You're supposed to be getting back."
It is a bond, Sadler admits, that began to form while he was still a prep basketball star at Bella Vista (Ariz.). While so many other college recruiters were showering him with praise, Hodge caught him off guard by pointing out areas that needed to be worked on.
"Most of the time when you’re on recruiting visits, coaches tell you what you want to hear, but he was talking to me about my flaws,” Sadler said. “That really stood out to me. You don’t hear that often coming out of high school and you’re a 5-star.
“If he was telling me that during the recruiting process, I couldn’t imagine what he was going to be saying once I was here. It was good that he gave me that taste early. It wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but it was what I needed to hear.”
Since the summer, Hodge has complimented Sadler numerous times on being a willing learner and that the point guard didn't walk onto the Morgantown campus like he already had all the answers.
Sadler did arrive, though, with the reputation of playing fast, which means there were adjustments to be made by both player and coach.
On Sadler's part, he said adjusting to the speed of the college game means he's had to become a bit more methodical and calculated.
"It's something I'm working on, but feel like I'm getting better at," he said. "Coach preaches to me every day that I have to slow down on the screens. In the first half (against Glenville), we had someone get called for an illegal screen and that was definitely my fault."
For Hodge, Sadler's arrival signals a different approach to how the Mountaineers will attack offensively this season. WVU will play faster on offense than it did a season ago when the Mountaineers ranked 361st - out of 365 Division I teams - in adjusted tempo.
WVU averaged 7.37 fast-break points per game last season, which ranked 316th in the nation. That was the first impression Hodge lended to WVU's fan base, but with a roster overhaul that includes Sadler and a more athletic bunch of forwards and centers, Hodge is more than prepared to steer away from that pace in his second season.
"It's a coach's job to assess what your team's strengths and weaknesses are and play to those strengths," Hodge said. "Obviously, defending and rebounding are always going to be at the forefront, but then you're not going to try and fit square pegs into round holes and vice versa.
"You want to take your team and say, 'What do we do well and what do we not do so well?' Then you play to those strengths."