It was a natural.
Arkansas State Athletic Director Jeff Purinton was basically conducting a nationwide search, along with Chancellor Todd Shields and University System President Chuck Welch, for a head men's basketball coach.
No doubt they had their wolves in a row and knew exactly what they were looking for and any coaching search today at the mid-major level would run through Alabama.
Crimson Tide Coach Nate Oats has turned that program into an elite one in just four years and even though they only made the Sweet 16 in the season of NCAA Tournament upsets, they were the overall No. 1 seed -- winners of both the SEC regular-season and tournament titles.
At Buffalo, a place known for chicken wings, Oats, who comes from the Bobby Hurley coaching tree, led the Bulls to the NCAA Tournament three times, twice winning first-round games.
Oats is 188-84 overall as a head coach, and alongside him every step of the way was Bryan Hodgson, 36, who was a vital part of the operation, especially when it came to recruiting.
Hodgson had advantages over ASU's other 10 or so candidates. He had worked with Purinton at Alabama, which gave the ASU AD insight into how well Hodgson knows the all important transfer portal as well as recruiting freshmen.
His personal story is one of self-perseverance, discipline and desire.
According to reports, he was born to a teenage mom whose boyfriend put him onto a lit stove that led him to foster care before being adopted by Larry and Rebecca Hodgson.
He was raised in western New York, played high school basketball and graduated from Fredonia (N.Y.) State in 2011, where he had been a volunteer assistant and became an assistant at Jamestown (N.Y.) Community College.
Midland (Texas) College followed that and then Buffalo and Alabama.
All the while he was working summer camps at places like Duke and Michigan State. He was impressing coaches in high places everywhere he went.
Obviously Hodgson is not afraid of a challenge, and he faces one at ASU replacing Mike Balado, who had one winning season in six years and finished 13th in the Sun Belt Conference this season.
From Balado's firing to Hodgson's hiring just took 11 days and that helped keep some of the current players onboard and allows Hodgson to find his way into the transfer portal so he can start recruiting.
This is Purinton's first hire and he did something really smart: He hired someone who he knew of their work ethic, was comfortable with and they were comfortable with him.
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In this wild and crazy NCAA Tournament -- not including play-in games because were those same seeds playing same seeds -- there have been 60 games and 20 of those were won by teams with lower seeds.
Obviously the two big ones were No. 16 Fairleigh Dickinson knocking off No. 1 Purdue and No. 15 Princeton beating No. 2 Arizona, but the No. 1 seeds -- which were all beaten before the end of the Sweet 16 -- only Houston and Alabama lost to teams that made the Final Four.
Kansas was beaten by No. 8 seed Arkansas, which lost to No. 4 UConn which is in the semifinals, and the other was Purdue in the monumental upset.
Only the Western Regional didn't have a first-round upset.
According to a report from ESPN, more than 10 million entries were made into its NCAA Tournament Bracket contest and no one had a chance to have a perfect bracket after the first day. The story claimed only 37 have the exact Final Four teams.
My bracket had none of the Final Four teams. My Final Four was UCLA, which was picked to win it all, Houston, Alabama and Purdue.