Ross Hodge Scouts Pitt and Preparing for his First Backyard Brawl

The West Virginia Mountaineers (3-0) meet the Pitt Panthers (3-0) inside Hope Coliseum for the Backyard Brawl Thursday night. Tip-off is set for 6:00 p.m. EST and will be televised on FS1.

West Virginia head coach met with the media on Tuesday and discussed his first opportunity in the Backyard Brawl.

Pitt Scout

When I got the head coaching job at Paris Junior College, I was, obviously, an extremely young coach at that time and he had just got the head coaching job at Oklahoma, young coach as well. We had a center from Cincinnati named Orlando Allen and they ended up signing him at Oklahoma and so I got to know him a little bit during that time period.

They’ve done a really good job of getting to the foul line. They’ve made more free throws than their opponents have attempted, which is always a good sign. They’ve defended well.

It starts with (senior guard Damarco) Minor. He’s a competitor. He’s gritty, he’s tough, he runs their team, he can defend the ball. Gets them into their actions.

(Sophomore guard Brandin) Cummings can make shots.

And then, (senior forward) Cameron Corhen. He’s gotten a lot better. He was second in the league last year in the ACC in field goal percentage and he’s expanded his game a little bit and given them a viable option down there. And then those young guys are aggressive confident players too.

They’ll run some initial actions to get the ball where it wants to go and then do a good job of manipulating space and ball screens and if the shot clock gets late, they have a couple guards that have the capability to make late clock plays either for themselves or for somebody else.

Preparing for the Backyard Brawl

Like I told our guys yesterday, ‘two things can be true at once,’ You don’t have to live in this black and white, binary of the way everybody wants to kind of do things now in the world we live in and there’s no in-between, but the way I presented it was, you cant really shy away from the fact that it is a big game.

You don’t have to be here long, even though our players have never actually played in this game, I haven’t coached in this game, it doesn't take long to realize how important the game is to so many people around this state and our university while at the same time understanding that regardless of what happens tomorrow night that you still have 25,26 more regular season games, hopefully Big 12 tournament, hopefully NCAA tournament, hopefully you’re making a run. While it is really important, and you can’t shy away from that because to shy away from it is being disingenuous and you’re not living in reality. And also, the reality your long-term goals – it’s not a formality after tomorrow night. You got to embrace it, you got to play with emotion, you can’t play emotional, you can’t let the came itself break you down – get you outside of character, and you got to try and execute.

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