Press Virginia is Long Gone, but Hodge Says WVU Will Still Bring Pressure Fans Crave

One of the most entertaining eras of West Virginia basketball may never be duplicated, but it is something fans yearn for — the return of Press Virginia.

Each and every night, Jevon Carter, Daxter Miles, and Co. would get after you for 40 minutes, defending every inch of the floor, really making opposing teams work for every single point.

Once they graduated, Bob Huggins pulled away from that style of basketball, and we haven’t seen anything remotely close to it since.

Ross Hodge is a defensive mastermind and is constantly searching for ways to string together stops and make life difficult for folks offensively. His teams typically have done a really good job of playing half-court man-to-man defense and limiting paint touches. Every now and then, he’ll throw a wrinkle into the mix with some level of pressure, but he doesn’t implement it for an entire game.

A fan asked Hodge on his radio show Tuesday night if the return of Chance Moore and Jackson Fields would allow him to press teams full court more often.

“At times. You want to have defensive versatility. You want to have different ways to win games. Some teams you want to speed up a little more, some teams you want to slow down a little bit more. So if you can mix in some softer presses just to disrupt the rhythm, and certainly we have more bodies, and there may be some games where you have to increase the tempo the other way. We certainly will do those things. We call them punches. Anything, whether it’s picking up full-court man or trapping or any of our variations of defenses we use, we call them punches. In the huddles and timeouts, we say, ‘Do we want to throw a punch right here?”

So yeah, Press Virginia is not returning, but the addition of those two players will allow Hodge to pick his spots more often and wear teams down with an extended rotation.

As you’ve already probably noticed, Hodge is quick with his substitutions and has someone sitting at the scorer's table pretty much the entire game. Those quick bursts of playing time keep his guys fresh and more active defensively. Once Moore and Fields return, it will put more stress on the opposing team because more often than not, they won’t have the numbers to match West Virginia rotationally.

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