MIKE BURKE

Allegany Communications Sports

West Virginia and Maryland turned to the state of Texas for their new men’s basketball coaches, the Mountaineers hiring Ross Hodge of the University of North Texas and the Terps hiring Buzz Williams of Texas A&M.

We don’t know much about the 44-year-old Hodge, but WVU athletic director Wren Baker does, as he was the athletic director at North Texas when Hodge became an assistant and then head coach there.

Hodge started his head coaching career in junior college, going 146-24 at Paris JC and Midland College, before going 47-24 in two seasons at North Texas, leading the Mean Green to the NIT semifinals where they lost to UC Irvine, 69-67. WVU will mark his first coaching job at the power level.

Hodge is regarded as one of the brightest defensive coaches in college basketball and engenders great respect from his players, but so far has yet to enamor himself with WVU’s big donors as they see a head coach with just two years experience at North Texas. In other words, the basketball version of Neal Brown.

Baker, who has had an active and very successful hiring history since arriving at WVU, is thought by some to be taking a risk with this hire, but Hodge’s peers speak extremely high of him and predict big things from him in Morgantown, ESPN analyst and former Central Connecticut head coach Mark Adams going so far as to compare him to Brad Stevens.

We will begin to know more about Ross Hodge today when he is formally introduced by WVU at 9 a.m.

Me? I’d trust Wren Baker. He hires good coaches and he knows basketball.

Meanwhile, Maryland is taking a little bit of outside heat for not taking a risk with its hire of Williams, also a universally-loved coach by his players, and a long-established veteran, who has taken teams from the Big East, the ACC and the SEC to 11 NCAA Tournaments, having reached five Sweet Sixteens and one Elite Eight coaching at Marquette, Virginia Tech and most recently Texas A&M, which has gone to the last three NCAA tournaments.

Williams has won everywhere he’s coached and there’s no reason to believe he won’t win at Maryland, which won’t be the first difficult circumstance he has walked into, seeing how the Terps essentially have no roster and no permanent athletic director.

Given all that former coach Kevin Willard dumped on the program and the university before bolting off to Villanova to be with Jay Wright, Maryland President Darryll Pines was smart to go with the sure thing over a potentially rising young coach such as George Mason’s Tony Skinn and America’s Duane Simpkins, both of whom, of course, have strong Maryland ties, but limited experience for the situation Maryland finds itself in.

Personally, I was pulling for Maryland to hire Northwestern’s Chris Collins (yes, a former Dookie; but then, so too was Lefty Driesell), who was said to have interest in the job and was highly complimentary of Maryland during the Wildcats’ most recent visit to College Park.

But Maryland couldn’t and didn’t go wrong by hiring Buzz Williams. He was the most ready-made top coach in a very dry market by the time Maryland began its coaching search.

Pines acted quickly, which he had to do, given we’re over a week into the portal season, hiring Williams two days after the job became open to stop the bleeding and add instant credibility.

Every eligible player on the Maryland roster has entered the transfer portal with the exception of guard Chance Stephens, who has missed two seasons to injury, and, as he reminded everyone yesterday on X (“Ummmm … I did not enter the portal”), freshman Derik Queen, the best player on the team.

This has been the second cryptic post from Queen in as many days, as on Tuesday he posted about the hiring of Buzz Williams, “Starting to like him already.” Which is what Buzz Williams’ players tend to do – like him. Very much.

Still, Maryland fans shouldn’t get their hopes up, because it seems certain Queen will enter the NBA draft, but as he said Monday after throwing the first pitch at the Orioles’ home opener (duh, he’s from Baltimore), no decision will be made until he talks with his mother, his agent and his coaches.

As for guards Ja’Kobi Gillespie and Rodney Rice, Gillespie, who is from Tennessee, visited Tennessee on Wednesday and has been expected to land there long before Mini-Me tried to napalm the Maryland program on his way out the door to Philly.

Rice, on the other hand, a former DeMatha Stag, who said he always wanted to go to Maryland, is, according to his father, Rodney Rice Sr., open to returning to College Park.

Putting together the coaching staff and the roster will be the first two steps for Williams, who said at Wednesday’s introductory news conference he has talked to the players and, for the most part, listened to them, and then told them he would help them in any way he could, whether they wanted to stay at Maryland or go somewhere else.

The hiring of Buzz Williams gives Maryland basketball the stability it needs in light of the developments of the past week to 10 days. It was safe, smart and necessary, and it will pay off.

As for the usual naysayers who point out Buzz Williams has not been in the same coaching stop for more than six years and say he won’t be at Maryland for long, consider: Gary Williams said yesterday at the introduction, “I was at American for four years, Boston College four, Ohio State three. Then I came here for 22 … I hope Buzz does the same.”

The name Williams, after all, is on the Maryland basketball court. So we just never know, now, do we?.

Mike Burke writes about sports and other stuff for Allegany Communications. He began covering sports for the Prince George’s Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984, serving as sports editor for over 30 years. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow him on X @MikeBurkeMDT