Forsythe

He’ll need exactly the same specs and blue prints this fall, when he hops into the driver’s seat as the newest head coach of West Virginia University basketball.

Ross Hodge was the youthful head coach of the Mean Green in Denton last season. Now he’s tasked with rebuilding and hopefully reworking the 2025-2026 Mountaineer roster that saw a mass exodus once its head coach left for the basketball history of Indiana in hoops-happy Indiana University Bloomington.

Hodge inherits exactly one player off last season’s WVU roster. And center Abraham Oyeadier was a redshirt last season at that.

As of this summer, Hodge has sculpted from the clay of the much-used transfer portal and incoming freshman a roster of only 11 players.

Thomas

Last year’s team had much the same look when the battered 2023-2024 roster abandoned or was asked to abandon Coach Darian DeVries’ newly designed ship.

North Texas doesn’t have the basketball history of many of the current Big 12 schools. Yet Hodge found success there, when elevated from an assistant to the head architect’s chair.

There may be gray in his beard and above along his temples, but Hodge has a youthful glint in his eye as he accepts the challenge that is WVU basketball.

His new five-year contract seems to speak of the confidence Athletic Director Wren Baker has in him.

He’ll turn 45 in just a few days (his birthday is on July 15) and will begin to feel the always-present pressure of what Mountaineer fans have in mind for all their athletic teams.

Oyeadier

Hodge is another new name in WVU’s basketball history. And so is his roster of transfers and two freshmen.

There are no players coming from national championship teams. None from schools with much renown gained from NCAA Tournament success.

They are Treyson Eaglestaff from North Dakota, Jackson Fields from Troy in Alabama, Jasper Floyd from North Texas, Honor Huff from Chattanooga, Brenen Lorient from North Texas, Chance Moore from St. Bonaventure, Harlan Obioha from UNC-Wilmington and Morris Ugusuk from South Carolina.

The two freshmen are 6-foot-5 Jayden Forsythe and 6-foot-7 D.J. Thomas.

More help could be expected since few if any major college teams have rosters of only 11 players.

West Virginia has become very competitive in the evolving realm of NIL (name, image, likeness) funds. It can afford most of the players it actively seeks.

Hodge needs to be the Frank Lloyd Wright of architects, if his teams are to find some early success in his budding head coaching years in Morgantown.

He’ll have the throaty backing of the state’s athletic fandom — and that includes nearly everybody.