Coach Bryan Hodgson and Coach Destinee Rogers have summoned the lightning
“I haven’t been this excited about Red Wolves basketball since…,” and then I trail off, remembering exactly when I was this excited about Red Wolves basketball – that would be 2021, the year Desi Sills left Arkansas to join Arkansas State and basketball wunderkind Norchad Omier. What a combination! Sills nailing jumpers and Omier grabbing boards and laying down righteous dunks! NORSLAM! At last, it was all coming together for head coach Mike Balado. 2021-22 was gonna be THE YEAR, baby.
Well, the season didn’t quite shape up to be THE YEAR. Omier was a human double-double, and even though Sills wasn’t quite a super star, the man was infectious on defense. But there was an element missing that prevented that Red Wolves from escaping mediocrity’s heavy gravity. It might have been the one-point loss to ULM at home that triggered it. We had Omier. We had Desi. And after an rather disappointing 18-win season, we had neither.
The next season, we watched Omier and Sills play in the Final Four – on new teams. They were awesome. It wasn’t that the 2021-22 was missing something. After all, you can’t miss something that was never there – moxie. Confidence. The entitlement that comes with know that you belong on the same court with anybody. Omier an Sills didn’t have that in Jonesboro.
But maybe, just maybe, we’re manufacturing some of that moxie now.
“I want the world to know who the Arkansas State Red Wolves are, and you don’t do that by playing cupcakes at home.”
Bryan Hodgson is a big, burly guy. He wears a Brawny Man beard and his eyes are two burning coals. If his LinkedIn page cited “bouncer for Roy’s” near Paragould, I’d have not been surprised. He looks like a man who arm wrestles truckers for beer money. It’s easy to be intimidated by such a guy. When he speaks, however, it’s disarming. There is no menace in his voice. He’s not exactly a teddy bear, but also he’s not going to break all your fingers with an introductory handshake. Bryan Hodgson is, in fact, actually quite funny.
He is a man of a hundred amusing anecdotes. He makes sure to credit all the people who put him in the position he is today. He’s eager to get to work, but not too eager, if you catch my meaning. Mike Balado emitted a kind of furious nervous energy; Hodgson radiates a confident calm. He tells you what he expects from the team, what he expects from himself, and then implements the plan.
He’s not a wallflower. During the Spring football game, he took the microphone and publicly shamed the Razorbacks for dodging his request for a game. He seems to enjoy football – I often see him on the field pregame, chatting with Butch Jones and Jeff Purinton. He appears to like where he is.
Hodgson is known as an aggressive recruiter – an a fine evaluator of talent. Mike Balado failed to acquire enough Ws to keep his job, but he was know to locate more than a fair share of pearls in his time at head coach. Hodgson managed to pull promising Red Wolves talents like Caleb Fields, Terrance Ford, and Izaiyah Nelson out of the transfer portal. Then Hodgeson managed to find a way to fire-up the old timers by adding a legacy talent – Freddy Hicks Jr., who’s father played on A-State’s only NCAA Tournament squad. Later, he announced another coup – four-star talent Darrian Ford, ready to get some playtime after being locked behind two NBA draft picks while at Arkansas.
Ford and Hicks Jr. are the featured feathers in what turned out to be a very fine cap of transfers who would join a group of vets that had already earned a seal of approval from fans – like Avery Felts and Malcolm Farrington. Still, how does a coach meld so much raw talent onto a team so well versed in Jonesboro?
The answer, in part, turned out to be a weekend team retreat involving some very muddy Navy Seal training – one which team leader Caleb Fields said evolved EVERYBODY. “It was great seeing Coach Hodgson get in the mud with us,” said Fields.
The team, mud and all, is a amalgamation of exciting new faces and veteran returners (“Everybody who’s back is who we wanted back,” says Hodgson). The team will not only have to mesh as a unit, but also adapt to Hodgeson’s style of play, which is fast. According to Hodgson, his former team, Alabama, played at a top-5%-in-the-country for “offensive pace” last season – while Arkansas State ranked at the bottom 5%. Hodgson wants to be in that top 5%.
Much like tossing his team into a Navy Seals training grinder, Hodgson has curated one of the most difficult schedules in college basketball with trips to Wisconsin, Alabama, Iowa and Louisville. “I want everybody to know the Arkansas State Red Wolves are,” said Hodgson in the schedule’s defense. “You don’t do that by playing cupcakes at home.”
“Nets ain’t free”
Destinee Rogers has not been subdued this off season. In her words, she projects moxie. “Let me say this, I’m impressed with the talent and work ethic of this squad. This will be a special season. Mark my words. They are different,” stated Rogers, whose squad won seven of their last eleven games last season after a very slow start.
But it’s Rogers’ roster building that has raised the second eyebrow. Rogers has revamped the roster, with Wynter Rogers (West Virginia), Kendra Gillispie (Baylor), Bre Sutton (ULM), Cheyenne Forney (Denver) and Emma Imevbore (Lamar) joining the fold. The transfers are expected to add needed firepower to complement Sun Belt Newcomer of the Year (and 2023 First-Team SBC) Izzy Higginbottom and 2022 Sun Belt Conference Freshman of the Year Lauryn Pendleton.
While Rogers and her staff feel good about the program, the Sun Belt itself is more “wait and see,” ranking the Red Wolves 8th this preseason – just a one spot improvement over last year, when coaches ranked Arkansas State 9th. Still, it’s easy to both embrace Rogers’ moxie and acknowledge the talent bump on the roster.
Wynter Rogers, the sister of Destinee Rogers, didn’t see any minutes at West Virginia (she redshirted), but she was rated as a four-star prospect by Prospects Nation and averaged 19 points, 10.5 rebounds, 4.0 assists and 2.0 steals per game during her three-year career at Little Rock Christian Academy. Put her on a starting five with Higginbottom and Pendleton and you have a team that makes noise in the SBC.
Non-Con Intrigue, Women: Arkansas
Arkansas visits Jonesboro on November 17 in what is becoming an annual meeting between the two in-state women’s programs. So far, the Razorbacks have had the upper hand on the Red Wolves, defeating A-State 94-71 in 2021, and 77-63 last year in Fayetteville. Higginbottom dropped 19 points on the 21st ranked Hogs in the 14-point loss. Will Rogers’ beefed-up line-up close the gap?
Non-Con Intrigue, Men: Alabama
Ranked #1 last season, the AP Top 25 has the Crimson Tied at a more modest #24 this preseason, but the intrigue lies in Bryan Hodgson confronting former boss and mentor Nate Oats when Arkansas State visits Alabama on December 4th. Oats has seen seven rotational players (at least 200 minutes played) departed to either other colleges or the NBA this off season. Can this new Red Wolves squad pull off an upset?
Sure, Hodgson Can Scour a Transfer Wire, but Can He Recruit?
This seems to answer that question.
Hill, a 6’11, Top 100 recruit and PF 4-star with offers from Alabama, Arizona State, California, Georgia, Georgia State, Kansas State, Seton Hall and Texas State said yessssss to Bryan Hodgson and the Red Wolves, making Hill the highest rated recruit to Arkansas State of all time.
Expectations for Red Wolves Basketball
Last season, the Red Wolves men were picked by conference coaches to finish 12th in the Sun Belt. This year, the program gets a little more love, picked to place 9th. Freddy Hicks Jr. and Terrance Ford Jr. were named Sun Belt 3rd Team. That’s all well and good, but the potential for more is to good to ignore.
Hodgson’s team is stacked. How do you even begin picking a starting five? I suspect that, when ultimately healthy, the first five will look something like Derian Ford, Freddy Hicks Jr., Caleb Fields, Terrance Ford Jr., and…and…we’ll the fifth guy is the hardest. Do you build on Izaiyah Nelson’s promising freshman season? Or does he become your inside 6th man with the more experienced Lado Laku starting in the middle? Perhaps you surrender a few inches and hand the rebounding duty to monster-boarder LaQuill Hardnett, the seasoned vet out of Buffalo?
The bucket’s not nearly empty. Recently, Coach Hodgson has had high praise for Taryn Todd (6-4 guard), Obadiah Curtis (6-5 guard) and Zane Butler, a 5-11 guard who played his high school ball in Paragould. We haven’t even mention three-point specialists Avery Felts and Malcom Farrington. If the Red Wolves have had a deeper roster in its history, I welcome input from all old-timers.
As for the A-State Women, Rogers showed us what her team was capable of when it was healthy and tuned. Her excitement for this squad is intriguing, and it would be welcome to recapture the feeling of those old Andrea Gamble led teams. Higgonbottom could very well be that Gamble-like player who returns Arkansas State to a competitive place.
Nobody believes it more than Destinee Rogers.
Photo Credits: a mix of me and the talented Carla Wehmeyer of Arkansas State
Howlraiser 