Wren Baker met with the media on Wednesday to outline his plan and the next steps forward for the university as he prepares for is fourth head coaching search as the WVU Athletic Director.
Baker kicked off his press conference with an opening statement about the current state of the WVU basketball program following Darian DeVries’ decision to take the Indiana job. Building off the success of the program this season, Baker believes that WVU is a very highly coveted job currently.
“It just showed that you can come in here and turn this program around and you can win, you have the support, you have the talent to draw from, and you’re going to have the resources. I hope our underclassmen give our new coach a chance to come in and give them a recruiting pitch. I can promise them we’ll be resourced competitively within the Big 12 and nationally, and we’ll find a coach that’s committed to them, and committed to this university and this state,” Baker said.
Baker outlined his plan to use the university’s resources as a pitch to the potential candidates and ensured that West Virginia would be competitive in all aspects. West Virginia is considered to have some of the highest NIL money in the entire country.
“I anticipate having great interest, we will be competitive in our salary, competitive in our budget, and competitive in all resources, and we will work tirelessly to bring the best person to Morgantown to coach our team,” Baker said.
“The new coach here is going to be extremely fortunate and lucky to be our coach, and hopefully they’re going to come in and really work to build the program and put down roots,” Baker said
Wren Baker, in his two and a half years at WVU running the athletic programs, has had his fair share of head coaching searches, four to be exact. This is something that he is familiar with having so much experience in his role, and he will reuse the process he has used to find success in the past.
“In terms of process, we started yesterday, and we had a head start because we did a lot of work last year, and we had a lot of time last year to dig very deep, knowing that we had an interim in place and could feasibly have a search, while some of those candidates are off the board and there are probably a few new ones on the board, a lot of them we’ve already done deep deep dives on,” Baker said.
“I think you just go back, we’ve hired a lot of good coaches, and we are winning in a lot of programs across the board, do I wish that we weren’t sitting here doing this again a year later? Yes. But does that mean there was something wrong with our process? I don’t think so; I think our characteristics and our profile are very similar,” Baker said.
Before hiring Darian DeVries, Wren Baker, and his staff did an extensive search on the coaching pool last year after deciding that Josh Eilert wouldn’t return and have said it had a good understanding of the possible candidates.
“Obviously, having done this last year, I think I have a pretty good handle on the candidate pool,”he said.
Bake expects this coaching search to be wrapped up rather quickly, most likely in the next few days. He has had a motto: “Be quick but don’t hurry,” that he has used in his previous coaching searches. Despite the short timeline, Baker reiterated that they would extensively look into every option to ensure that they are going to bring the best guy in to connect with the fanbase and continue to build off the tradition and pride that the program carries.
“This I know that there will be a conclusion in the next few days. We’ll hire a new coach, well bring him here and introduce him, and they’ll start to build support and rally the fanbase and well start talking about next year,” Baker said.
