MORGANTOWN — West Virginia athletic director Wren Baker spoke Thursday morning about several aspects of the WVU athletic department.
Baker’s first year leading the Mountaineers was filled with surprises and unexpected obstacles but he feels good about where several of WVU’s programs are at and how they are positioned for the future.
Baseball
The 2024 season will be Randy Mazey’s final as head coach of the Mountaineers’ baseball program. In July it was announced that Mazey intended to retire at the end of the year and assistant coach Steve Sabins was designated as the coach-in-waiting, who would take over in 2025 with a contract that runs through 2029.
Baker said that decision was reached through compromises made by all three men.
“Generally, I’m not a huge fan of coach-in-waiting,” Baker said. “Probably in a 24-hour period, that’s as much as I’ve ever given on a position that I felt strongly about in my entire career.
“Even though I have a very high opinion of Coach Sabins and he would have been a very strong candidate for our job, fundamentally I’ve just seen too many of those go not so well so I’m just not a huge fan. But in that particular case, Coach Mazey and Coach Sabins have such a great relationship and they both came to the table with the spirit to make it work.”
Baker said he, Mazey and Sabins all made compromises to reach their ultimate decision. Baker gave up doing a full search, Sabins remained an assistant at WVU for 2024 despite having a head coaching offer elsewhere and Mazey agreed to step away earlier than he perhaps would have otherwise.
“Everybody was giving a little bit,’ Baker said. “I was giving up on feeling every time we should do a full search and the best candidate should be hired then. Coach Sabins had a Power 5 job offer on the table, it was his. And Coach Mazey maybe would’ve gone a bit longer in a different time and place, but in his mind, Coach Sabins was always going to be the successor. Really it was three guys sitting down and talking about what’s best for the program.”
Football
Baker’s first order of business when he was hired last year was to make decisions about the future of the football program. He decided to retain head coach Neal Brown in short order and was rewarded with the team’s best season under Brown to date.
“I was coming in last year getting a lot of questions about football and I’m always going to be calm and exude confidence,” Baker said. “But that’s hard when you’re always getting questions about something and you don’t know and you weren’t here for.”
The Mountaineers went 8-4 this season and will play in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl on Dec. 27 (5:30 p.m./ESPN).
“I have spent a lot of time around the program with meeting individually with all the coaches, I know most of the student-athletes, I’ve been to a ton of practices, I’ve been in the locker room for pregame, halftime, postgame, so I have a great feel for the program,” Baker said. “There’s so many things that are done right inside the program. I am very proud of that.”
The success on the field this season has allowed the public to get a better sense of how well the program was being run on the inside, according to Baker.
“The general public is going to judge you by the tip of that iceberg, which is that scoreboard on 12 Saturdays,” he said. “I’m really proud of the team and excited about the future. I thought (signing day) was a great day with the additions they brought in.”
Basketball
In his first year, Baker had to hire new head coaches for both of the Mountaineers’ basketball programs. Women’s coach Mark Kellogg has WVU off to an 11-0 start while interim men’s coach Josh Eilert has faced one hardship after another as the team sits at 4-7.
“I get the focus of the public on wins and losses because it’s the only metric they really have a window into,’ Baker said. “But I get a 360 view of everything that goes on within the program.
“My goal is to do a thorough review of each of our programs at the end of the year. For men’s basketball, they’ve only played a third of their games. It has certainly been a season that is full of challenges. I’ve been clear that Coach Eilert has handled most, if not all, of those challenges well.”
Kellogg replaced one-year head coach Dawn Plitzuweit while Eliert was given the interim tag following Bob Huggins’ resignation over the summer.
“I think both have done a good job presented with two totally different situations. Both challenging in their own way,” Baker said. “Coach Kellogg came into a program where he was the third head coach in three years and his predecessor left after one year. He really had to come in and build trust. He had to bring in a lot of players and get them on teh same page and I think he’s done a really good job at that.
“Coach Eilert was different, but not totally different. I always knew that the challenge was great, and I told Coach Eilert that. In one of our last meetings, I said I almost feel bad putting him in this position because I know how hard it’s going to be.”
Baker said just taking a roster of mostly transfer players and getting them to play together would have been challenging enough for Eilert.
“Just that would have been a monumental job,’ he said. “Then you take the coaching change, the transfer portal opening, some more roster fluctuations, not being able to get waivers for a couple of the kids, injuries and it’s certainly been challenging.”
