For the third consecutive off-season West Virginia not only faced a coaching transition but essentially a complete roster rebuild within the basketball program.
The Mountaineers have hired North Texas head coach Ross Hodge, so let's look at the roster.
Currently, only three potential scholarship returners remain on the roster after forward Tucker DeVries, forward Amani Hansberry, guard Jonathan Powell, guard Sencire Harris and guard KJ Tenner have all entered their names into the transfer portal since the departure of Darian DeVries to Indiana.
Throw on top the graduations of guard Javon Small, forward Toby Okani, center Eduardo Andre and guard Joseph Yesufu and that’s essentially the entire eight-man rotation not currently on the roster.
That’s almost all of the returning production from a team that was 19-13 a season ago.
It remains to be seen if any of them will reconsider their decision as the Mountaineers have filled their head coach opening with Hodge but that leaves the program with little, to almost no, on the court experience left.
West Virginia still has three scholarship players on the roster in forward Haris Elezovich, center Abraham Oyeadier and forward Ofri Naveh, the lone holdover from the transition from interim head coach Josh Eilert to DeVries last season. Those players combined played a total of 53 minutes last season with Elezovich accounting for all of those across 13 games as the other two redshirted.
Extending that out to the year before Naveh played a total of 331 minutes across 24 games, meaning that again Hodge will face a roster rebuild even if any of these three remain with the program.
Fortunately, this isn’t some novel concept in today’s college basketball. The transfer portal can taketh, but it certainly can giveth, too. As the Mountaineers proved last season, it can be done.
Hodge has already faced a similar challenge in his two seasons atop a Division I program during his time in Denton.
Hodge has gone 46-23 in two seasons leading the Mean Green with back-to-back trips to the NIT. After rebuilding the roster in his first season, a 19-15 first year where Hodge dealt with injuries to key members of his rotation, he was forced to again undertake the task this past off-season with the top six scorers exiting the program.
A total of five of those transferred out with eligibility remaining with their eventual destinations ranging from Michigan to Vanderbilt to St. John’s to New Mexico to East Tennessee State.
So, how did North Texas respond? Hodge rebuilt the roster and led North Texas to a 27-8 overall record, a second-place finish in the American Athletic Conference and a trip to the Final 4 of the NIT.
Coaches in this modern college basketball landscape are equipped to build rosters from year-to-year. While this would have been an almost impossible feat in the past, the system is now more friendly to flipping an entire roster over than it has ever been in college basketball.
Is it ideal? No. Do you want stability and continuation from the previous season? Yes. But Hodge likely won’t have that option when it comes to constructing what next year’s team will look like although there is the possibility to bring some players with him from his previous stop as well.
The good news is the transfer portal is going to have plenty of options to sort through from other places, too. The database is essentially busting out the seams with possible transfer targets to help the Mountaineers once again pick up the pieces and start anew.
That’s not to say you wouldn’t want Hodge to try to reel back in some of those that have departed, but if that isn’t in the cards you simply do what you can and move forward.
That doesn’t mean there won’t be apprehension from the fan base over doing this once again – but as it was proven last season here and at other places it certainly isn’t an impossible task and is something many mid-major programs are accustomed to doing every season regardless with their best pieces being plucked out of the portal.
Another off-season of change is upon the West Virginia basketball program, now it’s about how Hodge and company respond.
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