MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Ross Hodge spent more than 40 minutes Thursday afternoon inside the Basketball Practice Facility answering questions about the Mountaineer men's basketball program.

Last March, Hodge left North Texas to become WVU's fourth head coach in a span of four years, meaning this will be the fourth complete roster overhaul since West Virginia lost 67-65 to Maryland in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament on March 16, 2023.

In that span of time, a staggering 47 different players have been issued Mountaineer uniform numbers.

The guys returning from one year to the next can be counted on two hands, including redshirt freshman center Abraham Oyeadier this year.

Guard Kedrian Johnson, in 2023, was probably the last established returning player that West Virginia basketball fans could easily recognize.

In many respects, major college basketball today has turned into what junior college basketball has been for years when JC players and coaches were getting a bad rap. For decades, the knock on junior college coaches was they couldn't develop four-year players, and the guys they were recruiting were in junior college for a reason, and usually not a good one.

Well, things have changed dramatically over the last couple of years and the coaches with junior college experience in their backgrounds like Ross Hodge are actually becoming pretty appealing today.

In junior college, coaches must be resourceful and efficient because their rosters basically turn over each year. Now that we're in the transfer portal era of college basketball, the same thing is happening at the major college level.

"I think there was a time when there was a negative stereotype associated with junior college coaches," he said. "I've mentioned this before, I got my first head coaching job when I was 25 and coached against some legendary, hall of fame coaches that to the common person, those names don't mean much, but they mean everything to me.

"They easily could be sitting in my chair right now, and it's like, 'Well, they only have guys for a year or two and can they take four-year guys and develop them?' Now, it's obviously flipped to where you are going to have high roster turnover, and you are going to be merging a group of guys together and how quickly can you get them to come together playing for one purpose and one reason?"

Hodge experienced high roster turnover during his two years as North Texas' head coach because in the pecking order of things, his better players were going to get cherry-picked by the power conference programs anyway. He took a team last year with three returning players and led them to a 27-9 record and the NIT semifinals.

"It's kind of a new norm that we've all had to deal with," he explained. "If you can bring back three or four players now, you feel like you've brought back dang near your whole roster."

Consequently, coaches must have a good plan in place when dealing with frequent roster turnover, and the philosophy Hodge uses today was perfected more than a decade ago when he was coaching one of the top junior college programs in the country in Midland, Texas.

During his two seasons there before joining Larry Eustachy's Southern Mississippi staff, he turned Midland into a JC power with players such as Guy Landry Edi (Gonzaga), Jonathon Simmons (Houston) and Ty Nurse (Texas Tech).

High on the list of qualities Hodge seeks in the players he recruits is having experience playing for winning teams. A quick scan of the 12-player roster Hodge and his Mountaineer staff has assembled so far is pretty revealing.

Guard Honor Huff was on the NIT championship team at Chattanooga last year, while center Harlan Obioha (UNC Wilmington) and forward Jackson Fields (Troy) played in the NCAA Tournament.

Two years ago, guard Morris Ugusuk played in the NCAA Tournament during his freshman season at South Carolina.

Guard Chance Moore has played on teams that have won at least 20 games each year he's played college basketball, including a 22-win year at St. Bonaventure last season.

Guard Jasper Floyd and forward Brenen Lorient were key members of Hodge's North Texas team that reached the NIT semifinals.

Freshman forward D.J. Thomas and touted top-100 guard prospect Amir Jenkins are coming to Morgantown from highly successful prep programs.

"These guys have experience winning, and they kind of understand that part of it and what winning takes," Hodge explained. "Then, you try to get them to understand, 'Okay, how are we going to win together?' You don't have to teach them how to win, necessarily.

"Some of it is you do the best you can assembling it and then when you get them all together you kind of figure out what the team's strengths and weaknesses are, address it and build it from there," he added.

The recent signing of Jenkins, a four-star guard prospect from Worcester, Massachusetts, demonstrates Hodge's recruiting chops. Earlier this month, ESPN college basketball expert Fran Fraschilla posted on X that West Virginia "hit the jackpot" with the signing of Jenkins, calling it "Christmas in July" for Mountaineer fans.

Jenkins, a high school junior, reclassified to this year and will be a member of the Mountaineer program this fall.

"We feel really fortunate for that," Hodge admitted. "It is a situation where he originally planned on doing another prep year, but a lot of those guys now have so many credits that they can graduate as juniors if they want to. 

"It was more a matter of him becoming comfortable with the opportunity we had for him," he said. "We just went really hard and really aggressive with him, and we're excited to add him. He's a guy who makes others better around him, so we feel real fortunate to be able to add him when we added him."

In Huff and North Dakota small forward Treysen Eaglestaff, the Mountaineers are adding proven scorers. Last year, the 6-foot-6 Eaglestaff scored a Summit League Tournament record 51 points in North Dakota's victory over South Dakota State, and he finished the season averaging 18.9 points per game.

Huff, an explosive New York City point guard, paced Chattanooga with an average of 15.2 points per game while leading the country with 131 3-point field goals.

Hodge took a calculated risk signing Moore, who was recently granted a fifth year by the NCAA. He averaged 13 points and 6.5 rebounds per game last year for the Bonnies after also spending time at Missouri State and Arkansas.

Obioha is a legitimate 7-footer with the ability to score near the basket. In UNC Wilmington's opening round NCAA Tournament loss to Texas Tech, Obioha tallied seven points and grabbed nine rebounds against a Red Raider team that reached the Elite Eight.

The center had 17 double-figure scoring games and five double-digit rebounding efforts last season.

Ugusuk played in 32 games last year for the Gamecocks, starting six, and averaging 5.9 points and 1.4 rebounds per game. He scored a career-high 20 points against Vanderbilt.

Floyd and Lorient combined to average more than 20 points per game at North Texas, and Lorient was recognized as an all-conference and Sixth Man of the Year performer.

Freshman guard Jayden Forsythe, originally from Brooklyn, was considered one of the top five players in the Keystone State this year while playing at Westtown School in West Chester, Pennsylvania, in suburban Philadelphia.

It is an interesting and intriguing roster that Hodge has assembled so far, and he's got one more spot remaining. He said on Thursday that he plans on filling it.

"We're working on that daily," he said. "At this point in time, it's best available more than anything. Commonly, basketball fans look at rosters and they always want you to add another big guy, which I get, but I usually have to remind people there is really only one big guy out on the floor at a time, and there are usually three little guys around him, but we have pretty good roster balance right now.

"We're trying to add the right person, as much as anything," he added.

The right person from a winning program, of course.