BLUEFIELD, Va. — The name begs for an explanation. Is his first name Hodges or should it be Anthony?  Hodges Anthony explains.

 

“My dad is a senior and I’m a junior, my grandma gave the name to him,” said the 5-foot-9 Bluefield College senior point guard. “A lot of people get it mixed up. I hate they get it mixed up because I love my name. Hodges Anthony, I love my name.”

His name blared from the loudspeaker during the first half of Bluefield’s 94-68 win last Saturday over Virginia Intermont at the Dome Gymnasium. Fellow senior Cedric Brown accepted an inbounds pass from Anthony and fired up a 3-pointer. Once the ball sailed through the rim and swished through the net, the game stopped.

It wasn’t the shot that halted the action, it was the pass. For Anthony, it was the 746th assist of his career, setting a school record for giving. Anthony was touched by the brief ceremony that followed, with his name and achievement announced to the appreciative crowd.

“They stopped the game and gave me a great applause, and they said my name and recognized me,” Anthony said. “It was like amazing, it almost felt like I was on ESPN. It was pretty great to me, pretty big to me, it really made me feel real good.”

Anthony has been making teammates feel good since arriving at Bluefield as a freshman from Columbia, S.C., in 2003. A pass-first point guard is hard to find, but Anthony is one. First-year Bluefield head coach Jason Gillespie, who replaced Tommy Brown after last season, knew that from the start.

“I knew coming in we had one of the best point guards, if not the best point guard, in the nation at our level so being a new coach, that’s always exciting to have a senior that’s at that position with that experience,” said Gillespie, who was an assistant at King College when he first saw Anthony as a freshman. “When he is leading us the right way, which is 99 percent of the time, we respond to him.

“Our guys respond to him and we can be very good. He’s definitely a leader type and it helps when your point guard is like that.”

A consummate point guard, Anthony led the AAC in assists last season with 7.4 a game. That number is up to 9.4 this season, not only leading the league by nearly five assists a contest, but he also leads all of NAIA Division II in the same category.

“Sometimes he’s too pass-first at times where he could look for his shot because he’s so good at getting it in the lane and so quick at getting towards the basket,” said Gillespie of Anthony, who scores 9.5 points a game. “If he looked for his shot a little bit more he might could average 15 points a game, but that’s not his style.

“His style is to get us in our offense and being a pass-first point guard, and he’s really good at that.”

A starter since his first game, Anthony has made a living dishing the ball to teammates and then letting them fill up the scorebook. While not the scorer that Philadelphia 76ers’ point guard Allen Iverson is, Anthony wears a sleeve on his left arm to emulate his role model, a player that he copies for his desire to learn and to play hard on every possession in every game.

“I’ve been a floor leader; on and off campus, people look at me as a leader and they tend to follow,” Anthony said. “That’s been a great experience, just having people come behind me and wanting to do the same thing that I do.

“That makes me feel great that God gave me that ability and I can pass it on to the young ones.”

Some people are leaders, others have to develop that ability. Anthony credits his parents for helping him harness his birthright and put it to use on the court.

“I was born with it, but I learned from my parents that I had to work over time because I had a little attitude growing up and it helped me as a I grew up,” Anthony said. “It’s great floor leader skills, basically that is the No. 1 thing I want to do is try to control the floor.

“When you control the floor, you control the tempo of the game and basically it’s all in your hands so once I do that everything is in my hands and that puts a big win on us.”

Anthony has been a big reason why Bluefield has been a winner. The Rams (13-9), which had won seven straight heading into Saturday’s game with Montreat, have won the last two Appalachian Athletic Conference regular season titles and have made two trips to the NAIA National Tournament.

Anthony knows that he is only as good as the players he throws the ball too. If they don’t score, he doesn’t get an assist.

“Ced Brown, Ben Smalls, Brandon Rosser, Channing Shortt, Curtis Dixon, Coryon Ross, Johnny Witherspoon, they all are great players,” said Anthony, reeling off names of several teammates. “Even the young ones that are coming up on the bench, in practice they all go hard every day and when I’m throwing the assists they battle and can score all day long.”

Anthony hopes to continue playing basketball after graduating with a degree in sports management. No matter what he does, remember the name; Hodges Anthony.

“They just came and told me, I didn’t know nothing about it,” said Anthony, when he first learned that he was approaching a record. “It’s a great thing for me, and it’s something my family can look back on in history once my life goes on.”

—Contact Brian Woodson

bwoodson@bdtonline.com