Monday Morning Thoughts: Ross Hodge's First Chapter at WVU Was a Major Success

Year one was never about winning a Big 12 championship or reaching the Final Four.

Of course, that was the goal for Ross Hodge and his staff, but it wasn't the expectation. They knew that this season was going to be about setting the culture and the standard for how they want this thing to look in the future. And boy, did they.

The Mountaineer capped off the 2025-26 season with three straight wins, taking home the second-ever College Basketball Crown championship, beating a very talented Oklahoma team that had won eight of its last nine games.

Yes, they blew several opportunities down the final stretch of the regular season that ultimately cost them a spot in the NCAA Tournament, but they never stopped playing.

Hodge's messaging hit with this group

They could have thrown in the towel after suffering a bad loss to Utah or when they lost the next two on the road to TCU and Oklahoma State. Instead, they scooped up a massive win over BYU that gave them a fighting chance. Losing to Kansas State without their best player, PJ Haggerty, was another chance for this group to mail it in, and yet, they answered by beating UCF by 15, earning the season sweep.

And then of course, there's the high level of disappointment that comes with not making the NCAA Tournament. This group moved on from that disappointment and just kept fighting. Go back to Friday night's game against Stanford, for example. Down multiple possessions with a minute left in regulation and down four with under 20 seconds to go, and found a way to get it to overtime and ultimately win.

Development was noticeable

Of course, it's hard to see how certain individuals improved in what was a rough end to the regular season, but there was noticeable improvement across the board. DJ Thomas, a kid who had zero high-major offers outside of WVU, played like a future star at times, including in Saturday's win over Creighton. There were moments here and there early on, but he got better with each game he played and had more confidence later in the year.

Defensively, Hodge took two players in Honor Huff and Treysen Eaglestaff, who many thought would be liabilities on the defensive end, and coached them up to be respectable defenders, helping WVU to be one of the top 10 scoring defenses in all of college basketball.

Surpassed expectations

Going back to the fall, the Mountaineers were picked to finish 11th in the Big 12 Conference's preseason poll. They went 9-9, giving them a seventh-place finish, which also secures them a spot in the Players Era for the 2027-28 season. They will be there next year, too, thanks to what Darian DeVries, Javon Small, and Co. did last year.

I had this group going 18-14, which they did, but I did not predict them going .500 in the toughest league in America — that was a surprise to me, especially after seeing their losses to Ohio State in overtime and then to Wake Forest. At that point, I thought reaching .500 in the Big 12 wasn't a realistic goal.

The signature wins were there

A lot of folks were high on Darian DeVries last year because the Mountaineers were dragon slayers in the first half of the year, beating No. 2 Iowa State, No. 3 Gonzaga, No. 7 Kansas, and No. 24 Arizona. Those wins were great, but they plummeted back to Earth in the second half of the season and had some pretty bad losses, which stuck out to the selection committee.

This year, WVU only had two signature wins — Kansas and BYU — but I would consider the sweep over UCF to be the equivalent of beating Arizona last year, so really, it was one fewer big-time win. To pull off 21 wins with this squad, with all due respect, was remarkable.

Oh, and even brighter days are coming

To put the cherry on top, the Mountaineers have the highest-rated recruit in program history, Miles Sadler, on the way. Over the weekend, he helped lead CIA Bella Vista to the Chipotle Nationals championship over Montverde Academy. He is worth all of the hype and attention he is getting and will make an immediate impact in Morgantown. 21+ wins in the regular season could be a possibility with Sadler and a strong portal class.