CENTER POINT, Alabama -- Center Point basketball coach Rodney Chatman is always keeping an eye out for his next great guard.
He tries to scout a sophomore every season that he thinks, with the proper nurturing, will be the team’s primary ball-handler when they reach their senior year.
He had Michael Gilmore, now at Alabama-Huntsville, last year. There was Anthony Bowie in 2009 and Sherman Smith in 2010.
This year it was time for Jeffrey Hodge, Jr. to get out of the corner.
The 5-foot-11 senior point guard has assumed the role of senior leader. He’s averaging a team-high 17.8 points per game. Center Point (20-5) claimed the Area 11 title with a perfect 6-0 record.
His job as the hired gun from the perimeter, waiting for Gilmore to dish the ball to him, was outsourced.
“It got kind of boring,” Hodge said in a telephone interview with AL.com.
Hodge is still the thrust of the Eagles offense. He’s making 46 percent of his shots, including 41 percent of his 3-pointers, but there’s a lot more he is doing to get those points, which is what Chatman suspected he could all along.
“He has really evolved into a more complete guard,” Chatman said. “With him being in his third year of varsity basketball he’s at the point now where he’s very experienced. He‘s mastered a lot. He’s pretty much mastered it all for the high school level.”
“Most guards that score, most of them just have a jump shot, but if you’re a good scorer as a guard you can take them off the dribble, so you can either shoot the jumper or drive if they take the jumper away,” Hodge said. “They don’t know how to guard me so they have to respect me.
“Some of them think that I’m just a shooter, they don’t understand that I’ve been working to get to the basket and make the decisions other than just shoot all day.”
The transformation has not been sudden. Hodge, the son of former Woodlawn and South Alabama guard Jeffrey Hodge, Sr., studied his predecessors for an edge.
“I knew what was coming,” Hodge said. ”When I would watch the varsity play I would say ‘Man, I can’t wait to do what they’re doing.’ I was already preparing for it. The two years before this I was just watching Michael Gilmore, and I was just watching him and listening to everything the coaches were saying to him, knowing that one day that I was going to have to step up and do that job.
“Last year all I had to do was sit in the corner and wait for the point guard to get me the ball and shoot, but this year I have to set my teammates and set myself up. Sometimes I tend to get greedy, but I can’t do that at the point guard position.”
And that transition will bode well when Hodge moves on to college. Given his height, Chatman said Hodge will need to be a catch-all guard. Right now Hodge has interest from Stetson, Montevallo and North Alabama.
“My goal for Jeffrey, because of his size, was to try not to have him defined as just a shooter. Because of his size he’s going to have to be able to do more things when you talk about going to college. I didn’t want him to limit himself, so having a lot of weapons helps.”
Chatman has been pleased with how Hodge has accepted and performed in the role as the combo guard. It has allowed the Eagles to be more diverse on offense.
“Now as a senior I can use him in both of those categories,” Chatman said. “He’s a point guard when we need him to be, he’s the shooting guard when we need him to be, and from the point position we can also get him shots.
“He has the ball skills to run the team, but he has the ability to score when things break down.”