WVU starting lineup is yet to be determined
Basketball opener is five weeks away
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MORGANTOWN – It is something that creeps into West Virginia coach Ross Hodge’s pattern of thoughts on a daily basis, the idea that by West Virginia’s first real game of the basketball season he has to come up with a starting lineup, but it’s hardly a priority now as he has begun the countdown to the Nov. 2 opener at home against Niagara, still five weeks away.
“You just don’t know what’s going to happen between now and Nov. 2,” Hodge said. “You have ideas, you have combinations, but I’ve never been overly concerned with who starts necessarily. You are playing a 40-minute game and you use different combinations.”
He notes that Brenan Lorient didn’t start for him two years ago at North Texas but made first-team all-league. Last year, Chance Moore didn’t start and wound up the Mountaineers’ third leading scorer.
“I know it’s important. I know it’s important to players; to run out and have their name called as part of the starting lineup, but I haven’t put a lot of thought into that yet. I’m thinking about who would we put out there if he had to get a stop or who I would use out there if I had to get a 3? As far as ironclad who is going to start, I haven’t thought about that.
It’s harder in today’s game as it’s faster on the court, there’s more emphasis on defense, players are being paid so you wind up using more of them, in part because they are the right player for the moment and in part because they will be the right player for a role next year and you want them to remain around.
Between playing rules and eligibility rules changes, it’s a different world.
Hodge lives in a different world.
“There’s more challenges. If everybody had to do it, it would be OK. It wasn’t that long ago, I tell my players – and my wife will get mad at me for saying this – but I do sort of have my boyish good looks, but this like my 24th year in college athletics.
“I tell our guys, when I was a GA (gradate assistant and just getting started on the lower levels of the college sport) I didn’t have a cell phone and that wasn’t that long ago. It wasn’t that long ago when you couldn’t practice in the summer and now you can. When I got to Southern Miss, all you could do was lift and play pick up in the summer.
“Then it went to you could do groups of four; then you could have a couple of extra practices. Then, when I went to coach Larry Eustache, he had it dialed into his clock when you had three weeks until your first exhibition, you had to figure out what you could and couldn’t do and whether it was enough.
“Now you don’t feel like you have to cram it all into three weeks. If you had a brand new team then you were stepping on the floor and you had three weeks to get ready for a game, but we’ve had players working here all summer.”
So you analyze them as a group, thinking of situations and in-game challenges as much as who is your starting five, knowing that three of that starting five may play only 20 minutes in a game.
However, you always are thinking of your “workhorse five” at all times, the guys you want on the floor most, the guys you feel you win and lose games with. Is there a template that Ross Hodge wants -- five scorers all averaging double figures, one or two elite scorers averaging around 20 points a game, two guards out, one a point guard, or maybe three guards?
“That’s a good question,” Hodge began.
It’s a good question because he’s known for his defense but his answer to that question seems to go in a different direction.
“I think with us having a defensive mind set, I personally would want to go for it and through care, through coaching, through threatening, through coaching you could be good enough defenders if you went for scorers. It’s easier to help someone become a better defender than it is to help someone become a natural scorer.
“Me, personally, when the ball goes in the basket it makes up for a myriad of basketball sins; so I’d always tilt toward more scoring than less.”
Last year that came through. His defense allowed the third fewest points in the league last year but because his team finished last in scoring, he wound up missing the NCAA Tournament with a team that probably should have been there.
There is no right or wrong answer to the question but Hodge believes you have to know what you want to be and what you can be to produce your best basketball and that may change from season to season, maybe even game to game.
“You definitely have to have role definition and role chemistry. The more people that can help you win a game, the better. The more ways you can win a game, the better. You look at the best offensive players in college basketball and they are also hubs for the rest of their team,” Hodge said.
“So, it starts with can one person guard your best offensive player? If one person can’t guard him, then the other team has to make a decision whether they are going to play one person guarding him or a zone or some kind of combination,” Hodge continued.
“What you probably are looking for is a couple of hubs who you can play offense through and then some people who can take advantage of hubs. So, you are asking, if Player A passes to Player B, can that player make a 3-point shot? Or will he dribble and pass to someone who can make the shot?
“You definitely looking for someone who can make leverage points to leverage a defense, but it doesn’t have to be five leverage pieces out there all at once.”
His mind wandered into an analogy.
“Anyone in here play chess?” he asked the assemblage of sportswriter to whom he was speaking and got nothing but blank looks back. “No? It’s like chess. If you were playing someone and all they had was pawns and rooks and knights and you had all queens, you probably were going to win that game because you have the flexibility to move pieces in a lot of different ways.
“So the more ability you have to score offensively, the better you are and then it’s just selling it to your team that sacrifices will have to be made to get to where we want to get to.”