Josh Eilert’s belief in those around him has gotten him to the position he is in today. He’s hoping his players will share that belief with him and that will pay off for West Virginia.
As Josh Eilert was introduced as West Virginia’s interim head men’s basketball coach for the 2023-2024 season on Monday, there was a reoccurring theme of his past — patience. Farmer, video coordinator, Director of Basketball Operations, and as Eilert said Assistant Athletic Director for six days all were titles in his past.
“I had patience through the whole process, my career here and it’s paid off,” Eilert said. “Don’t jump ship just because you always see greener pastures, things will work out if you’re just loyal.”
That loyalty has him following in the footsteps of not only a Hall of Famer, but a man who helped Eilert build to the position he is in today, and he has to do it with the pressure of being a first-time head coach, in the best basketball conference in America, and figure things out in just three months’ time.
“We’re going to take it day by day; we’re not going to try and get ahead of ourselves. First and foremost, we’ve got to solidify our roster,” Eilert said. “I feel like now that we’re building a new foundation, I think some of the stuff is going to calm down.”
Director of Athletics Wren Baker has certainly had a challenging past 10 days to say the least. Baker had to handle the removal of arguably the most popular person in the state of West Virginia, as well as try and conduct a coaching search for a storied program that same person helped build.
“This is the 20th time I’ve led a head coaching search and for a variety of reasons it was certainly the most complicated,” Baker said.
Baker and the rest of the search committee ultimately decided to stick the interim tag on Eilert and name him the head coach for this upcoming season. However, that won’t be the way Baker views Eilert in this role.
“He is the head coach and I want him to feel and know he’s empowered in that role,” Baker said. “I felt like it was important to make our intentions known now for that reason. That way people don’t have to sit around and speculate, they know what our plan is.”
Eilert started his career at Kansas State. There, he was a graduate assistant under Huggins. When Huggins made the move to Morgantown, Eilert followed serving in different roles from video coordinator to head of basketball operations, to being named an assistant coach in 2022.
That devotion to the program at WVU as well as the game in general has now done wonders for Eilert and put him in a position he could not imagined he would be in when the Mountaineers fell in the NCAA Tournament in March.
“That doesn’t concern me,” Eilert said of the interim title. “My staff and I we are going to build a great gameplan and we’re going to go at this and try to win,” Eilert said. “I understand that this isn’t going to be handed over to me on a platter and I have to earn it.”
As far as earning this job and possibly earning a promotion to full-time head coach next year, it will be up to his relationships with the players and their performance on the court to help decide his future.
Eilert has already been dealt a challenging roster situation with one player having transferred to another school and three others entering the transfer portal since Thursday. That’s possibly not the end of it as players have until July 17 to enter the transfer portal as the 30-day window would then close.
“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. “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.”
Creating that special feeling will not be easy for Eilert. Right now, he is only familiar with five of the nine guys on his roster and has only seen four of them play in a West Virginia uniform. Eilert is going to have to create cohesion between himself and his team as well as the rest of his staff and do it in a smaller period of time than normal.
“There’s an amount of trust you have to have with an individual. They have their individual goals and there’s selfish goals, but we have our program goals… Sunday we started having those conversations, the sun came up on Sunday, a new day on Mountaineer Nation and we turned the page. And we figure out how we can make the most of this.”
As for making the most out of it, that begins with Eilert’s mindset. Eilert has gotten to this juncture in his career through hard work and dedication to the people and the belief he shared with them. He now has to transfer that belief on the court for West Virginia.
“I’m up for any challenge, I mean that’s how you grow,” Eilert said. “If you don’t jump outside your box and feel comfortable in your own skin, and get out there and test yourself, how are you going to grow.
“I’m excited for this challenge, I’m really pumped. I know the fans have our support; I feel that. I feel Mountaineer Nation and the people here are great and they always have been. That’s really why we’ve stuck around for 16 years. We’ve really had great relationships here and it’s a special place and we want to make this special and we want to make Mountaineer Nation of what we’re doing.”
On Monday when Eilert was introduced he was 133 days from his first official game as the head coach of West Virginia. He knows there is going to be pressure, but his faith in the people around him got him to this point, and he believes him, and his staff can help meet that expectation level set for the program.
“Anybody that had to take this role is going to feel a lot of pressure,” Eilert said. “I’m excited to show what I can do and what our staff can do and what our guys can do.”
