Wren Baker says narrative surrounding West Virginia’s coaching decision is ‘overplayed’

West Virginia athletic director Wren Baker said the narrative surrounding the basketball coaching decision was overplayed.

Amid Bob Huggins’ resignation, Josh Eilert was named the interim head coach for the 2023-24 season, until a permanent replacement is named. That could be Eilert in the end.

But with a coaching change, comes player change as well, such as the transfer portal and players vacating West Virginia. Not so fast, says Baker.

“I think that probably got overplayed a little bit just in terms of maybe public perception,” Baker said. “Once there was a head coaching vacancy, the portal reopened, so there were going to be guys testing that no matter what course of action was taken after that. And I knew that but I think you always, when you’re in my position, you want to weigh a variety of factors.

“Certainly the guys in that locker room’s voices should be heard, you know? You can’t go make a hire that just satisfies one group of guys for one season. You have to do what you think is best for the program. 

With Eilert at the helm of West Virginia, Baker felt it was the right move based on what he heard from the team.

“When I talked to the team, I was consistent in saying that over and over, those were individual conversations or team conversations,” Baker said. “I just said, ‘Hey, you guys, absolutely. I’m here to listen, you know, can’t tell you every candidate we’re talking to because of confidentiality, but I’ll tell you where we’re at in the process, what I think the timeline looks like, and that absolutely your voice, it will be heard.’

“But I never got to a place where I’m thinking, hey, we’re gonna do this because we and I’ll say this for him, I think there’s an unreasonable expectation that he can just magically keep everybody from going into the portal like that. It’s not the case. That all was triggered a week ago.”

Basically, everything moved at a rapid pace amid the West Virginia coaching change.

“I understood that we probably had a compressed timeline because of that, and we really didn’t have as much as much time to do this as you would in a traditional window,” Baker said. “So was it a factor? Maybe, but probably the bigger factor is just letting the young men in that locker room have a voice on the kind of leader that they would like to see in the program. 

“And then weighing that voice appropriately with all the other stakeholders  … many other people that have a lot of affinity and love and appreciation for this program. So there were a lot of voices that I tried to listen to and consider.”