MORGANTOWN — There was a time in college basketball when junior college coaches were sort of like being the kid down the block.

There’s nothing wrong with that kid. It’s perfectly fine to hang out with him after school.

It’s just when it comes time for the birthday parties, the kid down the block rarely gets an invite.

That was, at one time, the perception of a junior college hoops coach, the life once had by WVU men’s coach Ross Hodge.

“They only have guys for a year, or two,” Hodge said in elaborating on the perception. “Can they really take four-year guys and develop them?”

Division I coaches have always recruited the heck out of JUCO players, but when it came time to hire a new coach, guys like Hodge rarely got that invite.

Except now the college sports landscape has completely changed. Every school, no matter if it’s a Power Five school or otherwise, is basically a junior college (a two-year school).

Players come and go. They hit the transfer portal after one season and rosters have to be retooled on a yearly basis.

“Now, it’s flipped, where every year you’re going to have high-roster turnover,” Hodge continued. “You’re going to be merging a group of guys together and how quickly can you get them to come together and play for one purpose?”

Hodge is the fourth WVU head coach in four years. That’s created a sort of revolving door when it’s come to the Mountaineers’ roster.

From 2023-25, the WVU men’s program had a combined 39 scholarship players. Only nine of those 39 had returned to WVU from the previous season.

Add in Hodge’s first roster — currently at 12 scholarship players — that number is 10 out of 51.

WVU’s current roster — Hodge said he’s currently looking at who is still remaining in the portal for a possible addition — is eight transfers, three incoming freshmen and one holdover in redshirt freshman center Abraham Oyeadier.

WVU fans will likely need more than a roster to keep everyone straight. Name tags might not even do the trick.

The players come from all walks of life. All four time zones in the U.S. are covered in their previous college stops and the majority of them have already experienced some level of success.

Honor Huff is the nation’s leading returner with 131 3-pointers after guiding Chattanooga to the NIT championship last season. Treysen Eaglestaff was the only player in the NCAA last season to have multiple 40-point games. Brenen Lorient was the American Athletic Conference’s Sixth man of the Year last season.

“They have an experience with winning,” is the way Hodge explains it. “They understand that part of it and what it takes. You’re just trying to get them to understand how are we going to win together.”

From 2006-11, that was the question Hodge asked himself on a yearly basis.

As the head coach at Paris Junior College and Midland (Texas) College, Hodge’s rosters were built from scratch year after year.

What he’s doing now at WVU, it’s not exactly a new experience.

Hodge won 85% of his games at the JUCO level, including one season at Midland where the Chaps finished as the national runner-up.

Hodge had eight players on that roster who moved up to Division I, including Guy Edi, who played at Gonzaga, Ty Nurse (Texas Tech), Dwight Miller (Tennessee) and Jamaal Trice (UConn).

The question now: Can Hodge find that same type of success with a rebuilt roster at the major Division I level?

That’s what he’s been trying to figure out during the team’s summer workouts.

“It’s kind of like you’re running marathons at sprinters’ paces,” he said. “Efficient is a good word. You have to be efficient with your time. You have to be purposeful.

“Our senior class, we only have them for a very short amount of time.”

Note

WVU forward Jackson Fields announced on social media Tuesday he will undergo surgery.

He was with his WVU teammates at the Best Virginia game in Charleston on Monday with a brace on his left wrist.

Fields did not say how much time, if any, he was expected to miss this season.

Fields transferred to WVU this season from Troy, where he averaged 7.9 points and 4.8 rebounds per game last season.