John Romano: USF has its first NCAA game in 14 years, and a coach has a homecoming

John Romano, Tampa Bay Times on Mar 18, 2026

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TAMPA, Fla. — Bryan Hodgson has come home this week. Or at least, that’s the straightforward version of the story.

Western New York is the place where he was born, the place he was abused, the place he was rescued, loved and given a future.

Which makes a trip to Buffalo for an NCAA Tournament game against Louisville on Thursday afternoon a perfect sort of homecoming for the University of South Florida basketball coach.

Or, another way of looking at it, the home he left is also the place that he has carried in his heart at every stop since.

“Going through what I went through as a child, I tell our players all the time: In life, we all have experiences, positive and negative,” Hodgson said Wednesday morning at an NCAA news conference. “We have the opportunity to determine whether we want to use those negative experiences in one of two ways, and that’s as a crutch or as a ladder. The people who use those experiences as a crutch to make excuses for their shortcomings, quite frankly, the world doesn’t care, right?

“Did I have the worst childhood in the world? No. I had some traumatic experiences, but I had people around me that were there to catch me, and the Hodgson family were at 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 and so when I pick him up and hold him, I just think about what happened to me and what kind of person it takes to do that.”

"What kind of person it takes to do that"? Was he referring to the man babysitting him while Hodgson’s teenage mother was at school working toward her GED? The man who set him down on a burning wood stove as a punishment for wetting his diaper?

What kind of person it takes to do that? Or was he referring to Larry and Rebecca Hodgson, the couple who took him in as a foster child and later adopted him and raised him along with their four biological children and three more adopted kids?

Either interpretation works, both the horror and the salvation.

It’s the point Hodgson was making about how we choose to react to life’s hurdles.

Which, in a way, also explains the journey of the Bulls this season.

This is a program that was reeling from the death of head coach Amir Abdur Rahim, a losing season in 2024-25 and the exodus of the program’s most talented players (including Kasean Pryor, who transferred to Louisville). In the span of about 11 months, Hodgson was hired, virtually the entire roster was remade, the American Conference regular-season title was won and USF earned its first trip to March Madness since 2012.

And it was all done with players with mostly nondescript pedigrees transferring to USF from mostly forgettable destinations.

“We know that we’re here because of the work we put in. There’s no luck,” Hodgson said. “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. For us, confidence comes from work.”

History doesn’t favor the No. 11 seed Bulls against No. 6 Louisville, but that’s not really the point. Since the tournament expanded the field in 1985, No. 11 seeds have gone 62-98 (.387) in the first round, but that’s irrelevant, too. And USF has only two NCAA Tournament wins in 50-plus years of basketball, but that will have no effect Thursday.

What matters is this group has grown together and gotten stronger as the season has progressed. What matters is the Bulls play unselfishly on offense and tenaciously on defense. What matters is USF has won 11 consecutive games by an average margin of 15.6 points.

What matters is that when they walk on the court Thursday afternoon, Hodgson’s father will be in the bleachers to see his son as a head coach for the first time. Larry Hodgson has been suffering from dementia in recent years, which made traveling to basketball games problematic.

That explains the tears his adopted son shed in Birmingham, Ala., on Sunday when he discovered that the reward for winning the American Conference Tournament was a spot in the regional in Buffalo.

His success at USF — and Arkansas State before that — has made Hodgson a commodity in coaching searches. There was a report in Syracuse that he’s already turned down an opportunity to coach the Orange, and Providence is supposedly pursuing him, as well.

For the moment, however, he’s made his way back to the same place that set him on his journey.

“It’s an unbelievably full circle moment for me,” Hodgson said. “As far as the odds … I’m guessing it’s very low odds for this to happen.

“But I think it’s all part of God’s plan, to be honest.”

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