It has been just over a week since Dawn Plitzuweit was announced as the new women’s basketball head coach at Minnesota University, which was soon after the Mountaineers lost in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
West Virginia’s new Director of Athletics Wren Baker said he was made aware of the interest from Minnesota before the Big 12 Tournament.
“Shortly before the conference tournament I was made aware Minnesota had interest in her. I talked with her and her agent near the end of the season and told her we loved what she was doing here and what we needed to invest in,” Baker said.
Baker also said that he had already begun gathering information and looking at candidates for the position shortly after the announced move. He has also noted that he would look at all candidates from any level of basketball.
“We have spent five or six hours (on Sunday) starting the process of mining for candidates, I am fairly open, and we will look at all candidate profiles. I have hired a lot of coaches, something close to 20, in my career, and five of them have been basketball. I’ve hired coaches from different backgrounds. We’ll probably be looking at head coaches from mid-majors and low majors, and head and assistant coaches from the higher-end leagues. We are combing through all 31 leagues for candidates.”
A name that has popped up in the coaching search is former WVU women’s basketball head coach Mike Carey. Carey coached at WVU for 20 seasons and is the all-time wins leader for WVU women’s basketball with 432 career victories, including 11 NCAA Tournament appearances and three conference coach of the year accolades. Carey announced his retirement after the 2022 season, but told WDTV 5’s Ally Osborne that he was returning to coaching. Baker said he had not had the chance to talk to Carey but would be in contact with him.
“I have not had a chance to meet with Carey, but I probably will try to talk to him to get his thoughts on the program. I’m not ready yet to talk about candidacy for the job, because it’s still early in the process. Any conversation we have right now will be about learning about the job,” Baker said on Carey.
When asked about being interested in the open position, Mike Carey said he is very interested.
“I definitely am very interested in the WVU job, naturally, I was there for 21 years. I did have opportunities to leave West Virginia, but I was very loyal to West Virginia and stayed there for 21 years and am happy about that,” the former WVU coach said.
When asked why he is looking to return to coaching just a year after retirement, Carey said the old administration at WVU played a part in his departure, as well as wanting to spend time with his grand-children.
“At the time I really felt like under the old administration it was time for me to leave. Now there’s a new administration there and I think things will be different and I think the support will be there and that was one of the reasons,” Carey said.
After speaking about Carey Baker went on to say that he will have an in-house committee with knowledge of WVU that will challenge him on the hire.
“We will have an in-house diverse committee of people with a lot of historical knowledge of WVU and people with a broad knowledge of sports,” he said of those who will populate the search team. “I want people who will challenge me, and I can tell you that from our meeting yesterday that we don’t have any “yes people” on it.” Baker said.
