West Virginia Athletic Director Wren Baker understands that in his position it's important to listen to all of the key stakeholders when it comes to coaching searches.
The job is to balance all of those opinions from a variety of people and places, whether that’s a donor, current player or anybody else associated with the opening. Obviously, when it comes to the players he has never walked into a locker room where they didn’t want somebody that was currently on the coaching staff.
“Because that’s what they know and there’s comfort in what you know,” he said.
Baker was asked about the candidacy of current associate head coach Chester Frazier, and while he wouldn’t comment on any individual names he did say that he would be open to looking at anybody that was interested in the job internally.
Currently, West Virginia only has five of six eligible returning players and are on spring break so there hasn’t been a full-team meeting with the current roster. The Mountaineers have had Ben Murray, who’s a sports program administrator, reaching out to those players.
Baker doesn’t expect there to be a need to name an interim head coach given the fact that the season has already concluded and for now the focus is on making sure things are taking care of academically.
But ultimately it will be Baker who pays the price for what the decision will eventually be.
“You see who’s up here with me today, just me,” Baker said at the podium.
Baker has to make the best hire possible in those circumstances which means making difficult choices on what’s best for the long-term health of the program. That means balancing all of those inputs with his own.
And that’s a process that Baker is hopeful can be completed in a rather quick fashion.
“I think this is a coaching search that we can execute pretty quickly. So hopefully in the near term, we have somebody in that's taking care of those things,” he said.
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