Minium: Helping Mike Jones Rebuild ODU Basketball Isn't a Job for Odell Hodge As Much As a Calling
By Harry Minium
NORFOLK, Va. – At 6-foot-9, with that same boyish smile and clean-shaven cranium so familiar to long-time Old Dominion men’s basketball fans, Odell Hodge still cuts a striking figure on the sideline at Chartway Arena.
He’s still that same gregarious guy so full of passion who helped lead the Monarchs to two Colonial Athletic Association titles at a time when ODU basketball was a regional powerhouse.
And in what was inevitably going to be a painful transition season, Hodge has also been a relief valve for first-year ODU Head Coach Mike Jones.
“Odell has embraced being the person who tries to talk me off the ledge,” said Jones, who was Hodge’s teammate at ODU.
“So, when we do lose, I know I will always see his smiling face.
“He’s trying to be the voice of the silver lining, reminding me that things will get better.
“He’s balanced me very well. He’s embraced his role. He’s done such a great job.”
Hodge is the special assistant to Jones and his coaching duties are more loosely defined than others. He works with ODU’s big men, helps with scouting and is a major presence in recruiting.
He’s also been a constant presence in the community, mingling with fans and donors. Even though he last played at ODU 28 years ago, he remains exceedingly popular with fans.
“Most fans still remember Odell or have heard stories about him,” said long-time ODU fan Larry Eakin.
“He reminds us of better times.”
Jones vowed that his Monarchs would be more competitive this season than last, and they have been. They enter the Sun Belt Tournament Wednesday in Pensacola, Florida with a 12-19 record, far better than last season’s 7-25 mark.
The Monarchs take on either Louisiana or Louisiana-Monroe at 8:30 p.m. (ESPN+).
ODU has been improved, but with a break here or there, things could have gone better.
“To be honest, I’m disappointed,” Jones said when asked about the season so far. “I’m disappointed because we didn’t win more in this building. And our fans have been here every game screaming their heads off.
“I’m disappointed we were not able to win more games for our fans in this building, but I am proud of what we’re building.”
So is Hodge.
“We’ve shown signs that we’re building something good here,” he said. “Not as quickly as we would like. But we have made progress. This program is going to win a lot of games in the future.”
ODU clearly won a lot with Hodge at center. He was a two-time CAA Player of the Year and scored 2,117 points and had 1,086 rebounds. He is ranked third all-time at ODU in both categories.
And he was popular not just because he played well, but because he played with such joy. Hodge was a physical force in the paint who simply moved people out of his way when he wanted to snag a rebound or put the ball into the net.
“He was a warrior in the paint,” Jones said.
And he celebrated each basket, each rebound, each blocked shot with the joy of a gleeful child.
Hodge was the MVP of the 1997 CAA Tournament won by ODU. He was redshirting because of an injury in 1995 when the Monarchs won a CAA title and upset No. 3 seed Villanova in the NCAA Tournament in triple overtime.
Jones scored 19 points in that game while Hodge cheered from the sidelines.
Hodge’s number 33 was long ago retired, and hangs from the rafters at Chartway Arena, and he’s a member of the ODU Sports Hall of Fame.
“He’s not just a fan favorite, he’s a legend,” Jones said. “He’s a great example of being an extremely talented, very accomplished man, but yet is so humble and open to everybody.
“He has helped so much with the alums and donors. And he’s helped us so much on the court.”
When Jones was named ODU’s head coach last March, he immediately reached out to Hodge. It turned out to be a long-distance call six time zones away to a small town in Belgium.
Jones went into coaching at DeMatha High School and then Virginia Tech and Maryland after graduating from ODU. Hodge, meanwhile, went to Europe to play professionally, first in Turkey for a year and then for nearly a decade in Belgium.
He eventually ended up with Limburg United Club where he served as coach and general manager. He learned to speak Flemish, one of Belgium’s three official languages. “Badly, but enough to get by,” he said.
He has dual citizenship in the United States and Belgium.
He married a Belgian woman, Sofie Hodge Ceyssens, and they own a house in Houthalen, in the western state of Limburg. Her parents are their next-door neighbors and they have a tight-knit group of friends.
Until he got the call from Jones, he thought Belgium would be his forever home.
“I could have spent the rest of my life in Belgium,” Hodge said. “I loved it there. I love the people there and the culture in Europe.”
It was Sofie who encouraged Odell to move back across the pond to America.
“You’ve got to take it,” she recalls telling him. “This is your dream job. I was 100 percent behind his choice.”
It helped that the couple’s two teenage boys, Matthew and Jayden, were then playing high school basketball in New Jersey. That would essentially bring father and sons closer together.
Hodge was not shocked to get the call. He and Jones had a chance meeting at an ODU football game a few years ago and talked briefly about what might happen when Jeff Jones decided to retire as coach, as he did a little more than a year ago.
“I told him if you ever get this job, I’m here for you,” Hodge said.
“Coming back here is more than a dream for me. Working at ODU is the only job that would have brought me back to America from Belgium.”
The move meant that father, mother and sons were each in different cities. Jayden remains in Belmar, New Jersey, where he is playing high school basketball while older brother Matthew is enrolled at Villanova. Sofie continues to live and work in Belgium
And while Sofie has made several trips to Norfolk, for now she and her husband are a long-distance couple.
She acknowledges that eventually, she will have to move to Norfolk.
“Even when we do Facetime together as a family, it’s really confusing, all of us being in different places,” she said. “It’s really been hard and really strange.”
But she says her husband is happy at ODU.
“He’s changed since going back to Virginia,” she said. “Here, he was in charge of everything with the basketball team, he was the sport manager (coach). It’s been weird to see him not in charge.
“But he loves it over there. He loves ODU. The other day he called me, and I asked what he was doing and he was with three friends from his hometown. He was having the best time with them.
“He wishes they had won more games, but he’s really happy there.”
Although Hodge always tries to maintain an upbeat attitude, he acknowledges that it’s been difficult at times this season.
The Monarchs got off to a 3-8 start, then won four of their first five Sun Belt games, and then slumped at season’s end, losing six in a row before winning at Coastal Carolina, 61-59, in their regular-season finale.
Season-ending injuries to Imo Essien, Stephaun Walker and Devin Ceaser hurt, as did ODU’s youth. Of the team’s 19 players, just three, including Essien, were seniors. Twelve of the 19 were freshmen or sophomores.
The lack of depth and experience showed during the six-game losing skein, as four of the losses came by six points or less.
“We were so close to winning a lot more games,” Hodge said. “In the age of NIL and the transfer portal, we were playing a lot of teams with two or more graduate students and that put us at a real disadvantage.
“We didn’t lose because of a lack of effort. Our players, they’ve gone after it very hard.”
They’ll have to go at it very hard this week to win a Sun Belt championship. The Sun Belt adopted an unforgiving bracket for its tournament that rewards teams for how high they finish in the regular-season standings.
No. 1 South Alabama and No. 2 James Madison get a bye into Sunday’s semifinals.
ODU finished 10th in the 14-team league and that means the Monarchs receive a bye into the second round.
If they win on Wednesday, they must defeat Texas State, App State, Troy and James Madison in succession over the next four days to get to Monday’s championship game.
Daunting but not impossible, Jones said.
“All we are focused on now is that first game,” he said. “If we win that one, then we’ll look forward to the next.”
“If we’re somehow able to run the table in the tournament, people will forget about our season,” Hodge added.
Actually, even one victory would be a positive step forward for ODU, which has not won a postseason game since 2019, when the Monarchs won the Conference USA title.
Hodge notes that rebuilding a program takes time.
“I remember it took Blaine Taylor a number of years to get things rolling here,” he said. “But once he got it going, they never looked back.
“Things are different now. The transfer portal is something he didn’t have to deal with that we do. We hope to get it done faster."
Jones said the love that he and Jones share for ODU has made each of the 19 losses this season that much more difficult to swallow.
“It’s been hard on Mike. He’s accustomed to winning," Hodge said. "He won at the high school level, at Virginia Tech and at Maryland. He’s not used to these kinds of results.
“But his work ethic, it hasn’t changed a bit. He’s determination hasn’t changed. It takes a great leader to work with the determination that he does.
“We’re going to ask for patience, for continued trust in this staff and this head coach.
“But we’re going to get it done. Mike Jones is a winner. We’re all winners.
“And we love ODU. Coaching at ODU isn’t a job for us as much as it’s a calling.
“We’re going to get things turned around.”
Minium is ODU’s senior executive writer. Contact him at hminium@odu.edu or follow him on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram