The Mountaineers should return to March Madness soon.
Later this afternoon, the NCAA Selection Committee will reveal the 68-team bracket for this year's March Madness, and of course, the West Virginia Mountaineers will not have their name called. Instead, the Mountaineers will likely be playing in the College Basketball Crown.
This will mark the third straight year that WVU will not participate in the tournament, which is the longest drought since they missed it six years in a row between the 1988-89-2003-04 seasons. Will this current drought come to an end this time next year?No one wants to hear this because it wasn't the season that anyone had hoped for, Hodge included, but the reality is this team just lacked the talent needed to be a tournament team. And yet, Hodge still led them to a seventh-place finish in the best league in America, pulling off a pair of upsets over top 25 teams, who have the projected top two picks in the 2026 NBA Draft in AJ Dybansta and Darryn Peterson. For this group to reach 18 wins and finish .500 in league play is quite remarkable when you think of all the issues this team had offensively.I don't like putting such high expectations on someone who hasn't played a single minute of college basketball, but there are exceptions, and Sadler is certainly one of them. He is one of the best guards in the entire country, and you could make the argument that he's the most talented player to ever come to WVU in the modern era, along with being the highest-rated recruit in program history. The young man is a game changer and a culture changer. He raises the bar, and by that, I mean the floor and the ceiling of the team's potential. Sadler will be a day one starter who is going to elevate the play on the offensive end by a mile. He can shoot, playmake for others, and create his own shot.Much like the football team, the coaching staff is going to be tapping into a tier of the transfer portal they weren't able to reach a year ago. There's now a proof of concept as opposed to pitching a vision. Portal targets can now see what it is Hodge wants to accomplish, and that it does work, especially with more talent. Not only was it more difficult to make their pitch, but they were also playing a game of catch-up as Hodge was putting his staff together at the same time. More time preparing gives you a much better chance, as we witnessed this winter with the football team.SCHUYLER CALLIHAN Schuyler Callihan is the publisher of West Virginia On SI and has been a trusted source covering the Mountaineers since 2016. He is the host of Between The Eers, The Walk Thru Game Day Show, and In the Gun Podcast. The Wheeling, WV native moved to Charlotte, North Carolina in 2020 to cover the Charlotte Hornets and Carolina Panthers.
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