College of Coastal Georgia athletic director William Carlton is proud to announce the hiring of Roger Hodge as the school’s new women’s basketball head coach.
Hodge comes to Coastal Georgia with a wealth of coaching experience and a track record of success, having served as both an assistant and head coach for championship-winning programs at the high school and collegiate levels including two head-coaching stints at NCAA Division II schools.
“Coach Hodge is a consistent, proven winner in every program with which he’s been associated,” Carlton said. “His extensive experience as a basketball head coach and assistant coach at the NCAA Division I and Division II levels will be a tremendous addition to our team and our staff.
“The fact that someone with Coach Hodge’s background and ability was attracted to this opportunity speaks very highly about the quality of our campus and women’s basketball program. But most importantly, Coach Hodge is an outstanding leader and a fine gentleman and family man. We are so glad to welcome him to our staff and campus.”
Hodge will officially take over as the Mariners’ coach on July 1. He replaces Jonathon Barbaree who resigned in May after two seasons with the program to assume the head coaching position at Anderson University.
Hodge is excited about coming aboard with Coastal Georgia.
“It’s an honor to have the opportunity,” he said. “I’ve watched the school and the basketball program from afar for awhile now and I’ve been impressed with what has happened there at Coastal Georgia.
“I think the sky’s the limit in terms of what we can do. I love the challenge and the opportunity to grow the program there and compete for championships. I can’t wait to get started.”
In a career that spans 29 years, Hodge has a 295-178 record as both an assistant and head coach while he is 182-136 as a head coach. He has been a part of five NCAA tournament teams, four conference tournament championship teams, four regular-season conference championship teams and four high school state championship teams.
Hodge most recently coached on the collegiate level at Lincoln Memorial, where he spent three seasons as the head coach from 2011-2014. His first team had the school’s first winning record since 2005 and his last team there recorded the most conference wins in program history.
Before coaching at Lincoln Memorial, Hodge was the head coach at Armstrong Atlantic State in Savannah for eight seasons from 2000-2008.
There, he became the school’s all-time winningest coach, closing his time there with six straight winning seasons including three with 20-plus victories after inheriting a team that had finished at the bottom of the Peach Belt Conference before his arrival.
Hodge led Armstrong to the NCAA D-II tournament in the 2003 and 2004 seasons. His 2003 team won the Peach Belt regular-season and tournament championships and finished with a sparkling 27-4 record. He was named the Peach Belt Coach of the Year, the South Atlantic Region Coach of the Year and also won the Naismith Award from the Atlanta Tipoff Club as the Georgia Coach of the Year following the 2003 campaign.
Hodge’s 2008 Armstrong squad finished as the Peach Belt runner-up in his final season with the school.
In between his head coaching stints at Armstrong and Lincoln Memorial, Hodge served as an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator for two years at East Carolina, where he helped assemble a team that won 23 games in 2010 to post the school’s second-best total for wins in a single season.
Hodge resigned his post at Lincoln Memorial after the 2014 season for family-related reasons and returned to Savannah, where he coached the boys team this past season at Savannah Country Day School.
Hodge began his coaching career in the high-school ranks in 1987 at Hinton High in Hinton, W.Va., which is his hometown. He was an assistant for the girls and boys teams through the 1994 season. The Hinton girls won three state crowns during that time.
He also spent one season as the assistant girls coach at Mercer Christian Academy in Princeton, W.Va., and one season as the assistant girls coach at Summers County High in Hinton, helping the team to the state Final Four in 1997.
From there, Hodge first broke into the collegiate ranks as an assistant women’s coach at Liberty University, where he helped the program to three straight Big South Conference titles and also three consecutive NCAA tournament trips. The 1997 Liberty team had an undefeated regular season.
Hodge hopes for continued success with the Mariners who have competed in four straight Southern States Athletic Conference tournaments while making one finals appearance and also one trip to the NAIA national tournament.
“Coastal Georgia has the chance to be a player in athletics, and that was a huge attraction,” Hodge said. “It’s a place where you can be successful and have the opportunity to coach women’s basketball at a high level.”
Hodge hopes to put an exciting brand of basketball on the floor here.
“We like to press and run, but we’ll do what our talent dictates,” he said.
“But no matter how things are going and how many games we are winning, we’ll demand effort and character. We want our players to represent the school and the athletic department well.”
As a player, Hodge was a high school standout back home in Hinton in basketball, baseball and football, winning honorable-mention all-state honors in football and baseball and all-conference honors in football, baseball and basketball. He is a member of his high school’s football hall of fame.
Hodge attended college at Concord University in Athens, W.Va., where he earned degrees in education and general studies.
He is married to wife Kristen and the couple has two daughters – Madison (15) and Emmaline (12).
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