Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN/WGR Sports Radio 550) - It wasn't an easy life for Bryan Hodgson growing up in Western New York, but he is enjoying his "full circle" moment coaching the University of South Florida at the NCAA men's basketball tournament in Buffalo this week.
Hodgson's Bulls team is preparing to take on the University of Louisville as an 11-seed in the tournament on Thursday for a 1:30 p.m. tip off at KeyBank Center. This after USF managed to win an American Conference title this past Sunday, thus punching their ticket to "The Big Dance".
After a number of different coaching stops and working his way up the chain of command, Hodgson is happy to be back home.
"Embracing being back here, and preparing the guys for the weather a little bit, we're eating some good local food. But most importantly, just honored to have the opportunity to coach in the NCAA tournament, and give these young men in my locker room a chance to experience something that I've been able to experience as an assistant," said Hodgson during his meeting with the media on Wednesday. "It's obviously the best sporting event in the world, and they deserve that opportunity. And just icing on the cake to be able to do that back here at home, in Western New York in front of family and friends. And really looking forward to the opportunity to play against a very good Louisville team."
Life did not start easy for Hodgson, who was placed in the foster care system at a very young age while growing up in the Southern Tier. The scars remain for Hodgson - both physically and mentally - but he reflects positively on the path that led him to this moment.
"I was set on a burning wood stove in Olean, New York at 2-years-old as a punishment for wetting my diaper, and left with burns down my entire leg," Hodgson noted. "I still have those scars on my legs - I've got one on each leg - and they used to take up my entire back thigh, and now they're about the size of a 50-cent piece. It serves as a reminder of where I come from, and the people in my life that have provided me this opportunity, because that's what life's about, is our support system and the people that believe in us.
"I had people around me that were there to catch me. The Hodgson family were the center of that. Taken into foster care as a 2-year-old, it's kind of hit me more now as an adult than it ever did in my life, because I have a 2-year-old son. So when I pick him up and I hold him, I just think about what happened to me, and what kind of person it takes to do that.
Being raised by his parents - Larry and Rebecca - who enabled him to chase his dreams, he now takes his life experiences, both positive and negative, and tries to utilize them as a teaching tool in life for his players.
"We have the opportunity to determine whether we want to use those negative experiences in one of two ways: That's as a crutch or as a ladder. The people that use those experiences as a crutch, to make excuses for their shortcomings, quite frankly, the world doesn't care. If you use those negative experiences to grow and better yourself, use them as a ladder, you're going to be successful," Hodgson explained.
Also as a result of growing up a foster child, Hodgson used his experience and his platform to help other kids in the foster system and at-risk youth with his nonprofit organization Coaching Love.
"Foster care is brutal. Oftentimes, foster children are left going home-to-home with nothing but the clothes on their back, and hopefully a pillow and a few outfits," Hodgson noted.
"I wanted to try to find a way to help foster children, because to be honest with you, foster parents can't afford to provide opportunities in sport - individual lessons, cleats, baseball bat, gloves. That's not an option. I didn't have that as a child. I took the stuff that was free, we were very fortunate to have people help us. So I founded Coaching Love in an effort to try to bridge that gap. And I haven't done a good enough job of it. I've moved three times in the last five years, so I'm really going to put my best foot forward on that moving forward to try to even bridge that gap even more. We've done some camps and clinics, and provided some sports equipment. But there's so much more that I can do and we can do as an organization. Two of my assistants are on my board, they're full believers in what we're doing."
Before his team punched their ticket to the tournament, a good friend of Hodgson's called him and boldly predicted that his team would win the American Conference tournament and find themselves in Buffalo to start March Madness. While Hodgson acknowledged it would be an amazing opportunity, he had no idea that it was about to become a reality after beating Wichita State.
"We win the conference tournament, and the way the American Conference's tournament is set up, we win the game, and we literally go straight from the game to they turn on the Selection Show on the Jumbotron, and that's where we watch it. We didn't have a Selection Show party or anything, but you're watching in the arena. I literally got back to the locker room after greeting people and doing a couple media interviews, just in time to grab my phone and put on my 'Love Wins' hoodie to honor coach Amir [Abdur-Rahim]. And I turned the corner to come out and sit down with my players to look up at the Jumbotron, and it immediately, the second I sat down, they announced South Florida playing Louisville in Buffalo. My heart just dropped in a very positive way," Hodgson said. "It's unbelievably a full circle moment for me, as far as the odds... for this to happen, but I think it's all part of God's plan, to be honest with you."
Hodgson becomes the first college basketball head coach from Western New York to start his tournament in Buffalo since Jim Boeheim back in 2014 with Syracuse University. He admits, though, he hasn't thought about that fact one bit.
"I think I'm pretty lucky," Hodgson said. "There's some really good basketball coaches out of Western New York, we're all in a group chat together. Carlin Hartman's the associate head coach and the great Florida Gators team. Adam Cohen - a Buffalo, New York guy - picked up a win last night as an assistant at Texas. Kevin Kuwik, Rob Lanier's in our league, and we were all in a group chat together. We're all [Buffalo] Bills fans, we all talk about missing the food back home sometimes. But it's been special. I've heard from each of them, but it's obviously a pretty cool opportunity."
Hodgson's coaching career really took off when he joined Nate Oats' coaching staff at the University at Buffalo in 2015, where the Bulls appeared three times in the NCAA men's basketball tournament in 2016, 2018 and 2019.
In 2018, the Bulls finished the season as MAC champions and earned a spot as a 13-seed, where they faced the 4-seed University of Arizona Wildcats and won convincingly, 89-68. Hodgson sees plenty of parallels with that UB team in 2018 to his team at USF in 2026.
"When we went in and beat Arizona, our guys got on that plane from the Buffalo airport, full heartedly believing we were going to go in there to win that game. My guys in that locker room right now feel the same way," Hodgson said. "We know that we're here because of the work we put in, there's no luck. I've got a great group of young men that believe in their abilities, they're confident in their abilities, because, quite frankly, they work. And for us, confidence comes from work. Louisville is a great basketball team, but I've got the best assistant coaches in the country, and I've got a great group of young men in that locker room that believe in themselves, and believe in the University of South Florida basketball team."
So what is it that Hodgson believes makes his team dangerous ahead of tip off for the tournament on Thursday? He says it's how his team has improved over the course of the year, and playing the best basketball possible in February and March.
"I said it after some losses early on in the non-conference, we don't want to lose, we're not volunteering to take an 'L' in any games. But if you can learn from them and become better, you truly want to play your best basketball in February and March, and we obviously are," Hodgson said. "We've got the fourth-longest active winning streak in college basketball, and it's not by coincidence. Our guys have been locked in, they're very process driven. They're extremely selfless, and they wake up every morning with an intent to get better. That's really showed on the court."