Ross Hodge Radio Show summary 10-30
West Virginia head coach Ross Hodge held his initial radio show of the season Thursday night and here is a summary of what was said.
–Hodge thought it was a great opportunity in the scrimmage and it was a first for them to get out there and go through the process of a game. It was good to get that out of the way. Wheeling coach Chris Richardson sent him a really nice text message and said that the only way that he could make it make sense for him how big of a deal it was for him to coach a game in the Coliseum was if Hodge coached a game in Texas stadium since he grew up in Dallas. He felt his team played hard and the effort was there and defended. They took advantage of what their advantages are in the paint. Their closed door scrimmage from an offensive standpoint it couldn’t have gone any better but that isn’t the way it typically goes. Maryland double teamed Harlan Obioha and it opened up shots, but they showed what he can do if you decide to play him one-on-one he has a good chance to score or get fouled. You want to be playing your best basketball in March so they’re going to be a work in progress.
–Hodge said that defensively is where his team has come the furthest since they first got together as well as from a terminology standpoint.
–Hodge said that you have to have a good staff around you. The first thing when you’re evaluating what you need is you start with the mental makeup. You want to find winners and guys that have won at other places when building a roster. You don’t have to teach them what winning entails but it’s about learning how to win together with this team. You better be able to shoot the ball and space the floor and make shots and have a certain level of physicality in this league.
–Hodge said you can have different ways this team can play. They can play bigger if they want or smaller than they want with shooters on the floor at all times. Then even their forwards are really good passers for their size almost too unselfish at times. They can pass and facilitate and it gives you ways to win games differently which is a good thing to have more ways to win.
–Adversity is going to come whether you want it to or not but you’ve got to have guys that are O.K. being in the locker room when you have a heartbreaking loss or didn’t play well. Everybody wants to be a winning locker room, but to him it’s about finding the people that want to be in situations where it looks bad and everybody is coming down on you. Who can really stay together in those moments?
–Hodge said he usually can go to sleep decently the night before a game but if he wakes up anytime it’s over. All the way up until his team’s tip-off he’s typically back there by himself. He said he doesn’t want to see anything that might make him unintentionally mad in the pre-game with warmups. After the game, he’ll rewatch the game and it is very hard to sleep at night.
–Hodge said that a big part of installing the culture is his coaching staff. You’re going to have a lot of turnover so to be able to have stability it starts with the staff.
–Obioha has completely transformed his body through the work he’s done and with the strength staff. Hodge said a couple of his former coaches reached out to the staff and said he looks like a different human being from what he was. He’s made changed and is reaping the benefit of it. He’s got great touch and great feet and he can move for a guy of his size. They’re trying to stretch out the amount of time he can do it and they want him to get around 25-28 minutes a game.
—Jackson Fields is fully cleared medically but they don’t want to just throw him out there just yet. He is working really hard. He went to dunk a ball and somebody blocked it and tore some ligaments in his thumb. He has no restrictions but he’ll need the proper build up.
–When it comes to building the roster for the future you always want to have retention that will give you an advantage. You will retain less than you used to but if you can have three to six that you can keep around and be good players it’s an advantage. There is still an extreme advantage to recruiting high school kids. Having those guys around and culture guys around is still very important.
–On the chemistry of his team Hodge thinks you get to learn a lot about yourselves and the group when you have adverse situations. He likes who they are as people but you have to go through those situations together. It’s neat when you get in those situations where the pocket of leadership will come from and basketball locker rooms are different than football because of the shear numbers. Every single person has extreme value even if they have different roles when it comes to helping you win.
–Hodge said that you certainly can have different levels of personalities on a team when asked about identifying bad chemistry. It doesn’t take long and there aren’t a lot of secrets in the world they’re living in now. You might think you can help a player or they have matured but it’s hard to change spots on a leopard. A good majority of it you have to vet out before the players get here and ask the right questions.
–Free throws typically can make a game a lot easier or a lot harder. If you’re talking about winning close games, you have to take care of the balls and make free throws as well as get stops. As a team he wants to be at 73 or 74 percent, which would put you in the top 25 in the country. He doesn’t know if there is a reason why some nights you make them and others you don’t because if you did you could bottle them up and sell it. Sometimes it’s hard to make them at home when it gets eerily quiet at home. Hodge would think this would be a solid free throw shooting team if you look at past behavior because they’ve all been solid at the line.
–On game-day, Hodge said he likes to put something soft on his heart for pre-game music maybe country, R&B or Christian music. He doesn’t need to listen to Metallica to get ready for the game.
–Hodge said in Amir Jenkins‘ case they needed another ball-handler and in the summer when they were evaluating players he didn’t know him and he was watching him play and his AAU team was very good. He was watching him and his presence on the floor, his size and assistant Phil Forte had a connection knowing the people associated with him. They asked about reclassification and they started the process. Jenkins is the ying to Jasper Floyd‘s yang. He is live and like a race car and that’s where any player will earn trust is if he can execute defensively. They had a scholarship open and Evans Barning can make the team and practice better although he isn’t sure if he will be needed to play this year.
–It starts on the defensive end of the floor because you’re not always going to shoot well and that gives you a chance. There is connectivity with the five guys out on the floor and it’s starting to look the way it’s supposed to look on the defensive end. If you had a string connected to all five players on the floor they would move in unison. Everybody talks about offensive spacing, but with the way they play you want to maintain good defensive spacing and that takes time to develop, too.
–The toughest thing to pick up in his defense is the foot angles when they are closing out on the basketball. The angle of their feet can be wrong and they don’t like to get beat to the middle of the floor. They want it to be on the baseline if they’re going to get beat.
–Hodge thinks every team has a chance to be a good defensive team but you can do it different ways. Each team will be a little different as to what their biggest strengths are but this team will try.
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