West Virginia men’s basketball officially began the Josh Eilert era on Monday as he was introduced as the interim head coach for the 2023-2024 season.
“This is the 20th time I’ve led a head coaching search and for a variety of reasons it was certainly the most complicated,” West Virginia University Director of Athletics Wren Baker said.
Eilert was officially announced as the interim head coach on Saturday and was introduced Monday. This all comes after longtime head coach Bob Huggins submitted his resignation following an arrest for driving under the influence (DUI) on Friday, June 16.
Eilert served as an assistant under Huggins for 17 years, including one at Kansas State where he was a graduate assistant and then for all 16 years at West Virginia.
“Why Coach Eilert — Well for starters, he is the type of human being you want leading young people and the type of person you want to work with,” Baker said. “He has incredible integrity; I was very impressed with him during this process. He is loyal, he hasn’t been a job-hopper. He’s stayed right here and worked his way up as a Mountaineer. He is thoughtful and strategic, he is honest.
“He also has a great basketball mind and as we talked to various people in and around the program it had been clear he had been given a tremendous amount of responsibilities over his time at WVU.”
Eilert was the candidate of choice after Baker had run a dual search of the interim route compared to long-term candidates. Baker said the search went on throughout the week, but towards the end of the week, they felt it was best they go the interim route with Eilert.
“We were hearing the concern with timing enough that we really started two parallel tracks,” Baker said. “One was for a permanent head coach and the other was for an interim head coach. On the interim side we were willing to consider outside candidates, but we were also very confident that we had some very good candidates inside our program.
“One consistent thing we heard from coaches, agents, and others, is they knew it was a great job because of the passion of the fans, the resources we provide and the quality and depth of this conference.”
Eilert’s philosophy will start with trust and accountability he said.
“First is trust. They got to have trust in me, and I have to have trust in them,” Eilert said of his guiding principles. “Accountability, there’s a couple things that come to mind. Come in everyday, work your ass off and something very special could come out of this.”
Eilert recognizes there is something special that can be done here. Eiliert’s first role will be trying to retain a talented roster, built mostly through the transfer portal.
“These are 18-23-year-olds. There’s a lot of uncertainty in their life right now, there’s a lot of options in their life,” Eilert said of his roster. “The biggest message I have, and our staff has is we care about them. We want to reassure them that this is a great place for them, and it is a great place for them. I don’t want to hinder them in any way if they feel like they have another opportunity that would be better suited for them and I’m going to give them that opportunity and if they want to take a look at something else that’s fine.
“But I’m also going to say the message here, we got something special. We got a special group of individuals, we got a special administration, we got a special staff, and we can do something really neat here and turn this thing around and turn the page and keep the traction alive of Mountaineer culture.”
As for Huggins’ influence on Eilert, he said he will take a lot from the Hall of Fame head coach, however he will still have his own way of coaching.
“Coach Huggins, his coaching philosophy will be engrained in me for the rest of my life, there’s no question about that. He’s a very defensive-minded coach, I think I will take a lot of his principles defensively. Offensively I’d like to change some things. As a head coach, I haven’t been one and there’s going to be a lot of questions raised about that, but I have full confidence in myself.”
