WVU men’s basketball head coach Ross Hodge, left, holds up his new jersey with WVU director of athletics Wren Baker. Courtesy photo

MORGANTOWN — Ross Hodge comes from a school that calls its teams the “Mean Green,” from the University of North Texas in Denton.

Now that he has been signed to a five-year contract as the next West Virginia University basketball coach, one of his first tasks will be to find a new roster of players, since at least 11 athletes from last season will be leaving. Hodge, who was the head coach of the Mean Green for two seasons, will be extolling the perceived fame of the name “West Virginia basketball,” as well as the all-important NIL (name, image and likeness) money available and the always-jammed transfer portal.

He comes to the transfer portal a little late in the evening, through no fault of his own. Players have been plucked from the portal for some time now, and Hodge joins in the scramble for his new-look roster, seeking practically a whole new team.

Harlan Obioha, a 7-foot, 280-pound player from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, is his first player addition courtesy of the transfer portal. The bulky player averaged 9.2 points and six rebounds a game last season. He has just one year of eligibility remaining, but must have liked WVU’s NIL situation to come to Morgantown.

Although he didn’t shoot at will while in North Carolina, Obioha converted 63-percent of his field goal attempts.

Hodge has attained a basketball reputation as a defensive strategist, even though he has only been a head coach at a Division I school for two years. The Mean Green had records of 19-15 and 27-9 in his two seasons in Denton. They made appearances in the National Invitational Tournament, in both his seasons at North Texas.

Hodge’s predecessor at WVU also had to craft a whole new roster, when he arrived in Morgantown after his years at Drake in Des Moines, Iowa.

Building an entire roster would seem to require more than cajoling skills and dangling NIL money in front of athletes, like carrots in front of hungry horses. And building with such a late start means the new man must have the skills of a sleight-of-hand magician or gifted vocabulary of a financial wizard.

Money has always been the international language of college athletics, so Hodge had better be fluent in everything pertaining to donor gifts, contributions and name, image and likeness techniques and machinations.

Hodge is only 44 years old and appears to be in reasonable physical condition. Maybe he can be in perpetual motion for 16 hours a day. Maybe his contacts and earned influence are enough to carry him along.

He starts behind in recruiting, in finding anything actually useful in the transfer portal and in chasing after additional NIL funds.

But he comes recommended by Athletic Director Wren Baker, who knows him from when both men were at North Texas.

A builder he needs to be. Indefatigable he needs to be.

His task is a herculean one. Will he mercifully be given the time to do it?