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West Virginia is hiring Ross Hodge as its new men’s basketball coach, a person involved in the hiring said Wednesday.

Hodge, currently at North Texas, is still coaching the Mean Green in the NIT. They beat Oklahoma State in the quarterfinals on Tuesday night to advance to the semifinals on April 1 in Indianapolis. North Texas is 27-8 this season — Hodge’s second leading the program.

Hodge isn’t the first coach to shop and accept an offer with a new team while coaching his old one. Former McNeese State coach Will Wade helped the Cowboys to the second round of the NCAA Tournament while being brutally honest with his players and the media about his courtship with NC State. Wade was officially named the Wolfpack’s new head coach on Sunday, one day after the Cowboys were bounced from the tournament and multiple days after The Athletic reported the hiring.

Hodge, 44, also has a close connection with West Virginia athletic director Wren Baker, who was previously the AD at North Texas from 2016 to 2022. Hodge was a North Texas assistant from 2017 to 2023, succeeding Grant McCasland as head coach after McCasland took the Texas Tech head-coaching job in 2023.

Hodge replaces Darian DeVries, who left West Virginia for Indiana after one season. The Mountaineers went 19-13 this year, controversially missing the NCAA Tournament field despite being a unanimous selection among bracketologists. The governor of the state, Patrick Morrisey, even threatened legal action against the NCAA over missing the field.

“I’ve asked (West Virginia) attorney general (John B.) McCuskey to launch an investigation into the NCAA Tournament selection committee to determine if any backroom deals, corruption, bribes or any nefarious activity occurred during the selection process. I know that the attorney general and I are going to leave no stone unturned during this process. We need to get to the bottom of it,” Morrisey said at a live-streamed news conference, standing behind a podium with a sign that read “National Corrupt Athletic Association.”

Before North Texas, Hodge served as an assistant at Arkansas State, Colorado State and Southern Miss. He was a junior college head coach in Texas at Paris JC and Midland College from 2006 to 2011, reaching the NJCAA Elite Eight in 2008 at Paris JC and becoming the national runner-up at Midland in 2011.

(Photo: Matt Krohn / Imagn Images)