West Virginia Athletic Director Wren Baker addressed the media ahead of the search for a new head basketball coach. WVSports.com provides a summary of what was said.
--Baker said that he wanted to thank the team for this season. He said he was prepared to be competitive and he had been talking with Darian DeVries about that and the plan. He has at peace with how aggressive he was trying to retain him. His job now is to focus on the student athletes and the fans.
--Baker said he is extremely disappointed that the team did not get to play in the NCAA Tournament. He has sit in committee meetings and was really surprised they weren't in the field but he doesn't want it to take away from the year they had with a new roster and the injuries that they had. But the season showed that you can turn this around and win because they can get talent and have the resources to win.
--He hopes the returning athletes give a new coach a chance because of their resources. West Virginia has a great basketball tradition. KenPom has it has the number one rated one court in the court and the state has some of the best people in the world.
--Last year, West Virginia hired a proven coach and it has made this job more attractive because it showed you can come in and win. West Virginia will be competitive in salary.
--Process started yesterday, but they've done deep dives on a lot of candidates from last year. The next coach will be extremely fortunate to be the coach.
--Baker said when you're having success it's no surprise when people are calling your coaches. He thinks most fans would be surprised by how much they have to fight off suitors for coaches and other employees. From a resource perspective they are willing to stretch what they can but other schools have more money. They first sat down in early February with DeVries' agent to talk about his contract and his situation to reward him. They had a really good shared vision of what they needed to do to build on the program. Every job that was open wanted to talk to him, but to Baker's knowledge he only talked to Indiana. They had a very candid and open dialogue and he felt good about being able to ward off most suitors. Baker recognizes Indiana is one of the most storied programs in college basketball, but he felt they had a great thing going here too.
--Commitment works both ways so when you bring a coach in you guarantee money in a contract. They guaranteed 75-percent, so his number back was 37.5 percent. Baker said that it's a pretty high buyout. They have a date in the contract if they left before April 30, DeVries owned their upfront costs such as moving, signing bonus and what they paid Drake. It's a big one for a men's basketball coach.
--Baker said that the job is to go out and get the best coach and you want other people that others covet. There are coaches you could bring here and there are still at risk. This is a place that's about fit and they spend a lot of time in the search process hammering that away. He talks a lot about the spotlight and the fish bowl and talks about fit. Baker said that knowing is wrong with the process and characteristics are similar.
--Baker said he hasn't decided if they will use a search firm yet because they just did it last year but it is a good contingency plan.
--Baker said he has followed a similar process for all of his searches here and back at North Texas he has been extremely fortunate to hire some good coaches. That process has played out over the long run. You can get hung up on losing a coach after a year, but Baker knows that DeVries did not want to talk to a lot of jobs that inquired. You try and learn from it and some interviews you might add an extra question or two.
--Baker won't talk about candidates but if somebody raises their hand and wants them to look at them they would when asked about Chester Frazier. But ultimately his goal is to find the best coach for the program in the long term.
--Baker suspects given what has been put out there with a commitment to him financially with over $6 million on the buyout, Indiana likely would have talked to DeVries regardless if West Virginia made the NCAA Tournament.
--Baker said that he doesn't have any regrets. When it comes to injuries, the medical personnel are in charge of those things. He doesn't get in the middle of it and that's intentional. Baker was very aggressive in trying to make sure DeVries knew that they were going to be very competitive in the Big 12. The revenue sharing is strong, what they were going to do for him and his staff was going to be very competitive but it wasn't enough. Baker doesn't have regrets but he isn't in control of the decisions that other people make whether he agrees or not.
--Baker isn't going to put his terms on a possible extension for DeVries due to the ongoing search but it was competitive and he made it clear they wanted a chance to counter but with the way it unfolded they didn't get that chance. Baker said that "within reason, they would do what they could to keep him here."
--Baker is resilient and he is calmer in times like this than when times are calm. As a leader, you want to apply a little pressure when times are calm and when people are panicked you want to be a leader. West Virginia has had a great history of sustained success and they have a great fan base. He is not sitting around thinking about retirement.
--Baker said the consistent long-term is building a ticket base and stability, but the $6 million buyout will help them with the new search. He doesn't want the driving force for somebody to be here that they're trapped by a big buyout. He wants people invested to be here. In this case, they do get some money coming their way and it will help support the program.
--Baker said he appreciates what Bob Huggins did and his history but he is focused on the future.
--There's definitely a financial gap between the Big 10 and the SEC and the rest. Kentucky's budget is probably $40-50 million larger and it's mostly tied to the payout from the SEC. He thinks it's a factor because if you don't know the end date with all the other things but those two leagues know their conference payouts are healthy. Baker would tell any coach looking at the job that they're going to be competitive.
--Baker said they could have competed with Indiana because there are a lot of donors that wanted to continue with DeVries. He does think they could have made a competitive counter offer but he doesn't know what it would have done.
--The $6 million buyout opens up the search a little bit because you can pay a bigger buyout for another coach. Hire a coach, pay the buyout and then fight with colleagues on how they are going to use the rest of the money. His only focus right now is to get the basketball coach and then figure out the best thing to do.
--Baker said he wishes he knew what the end game was for conference realignment because then he would engineer the exact path for West Virginia to be in it. The best indicator is to look at the past and you've seen more consolidation of conferences. West Virginia has a really good brand and strong viewership and valuations.
--Getting the right coach in here, giving them the tools and retaining them will help get West Virginia back to a high level of college basketball.
--Baker said he will never rush a process because the desired goal is to get the best candidate but you definitely feel a sense of pressure to be as efficient and quick as you can given the fluid nature of rosters and the transfer portal. But you have to resist using that as a driving force because you can make some long term mistakes for some short term fixes.
--Baker said he appreciates the Governor and Attorney General's passion but he was not consulted on what they did.
--Baker is going to meet with the coaches and he said he doesn't think they need to identify an interim head coach but make sure academics are going well. He thinks they can execute this search really quickly.
--Most of your candidates are still playing so you're working on their schedule.
--When you're in this job you listen to all stakeholders but your job is to balance those opinions. Ultimately, Baker knows who pays the price for his decisions. He has to make the hire that is best so you try to weigh all of that. President Michael Benson has been awesome and engaged even though he has been finishing up his work there. He played college basketball and loves it. He was aware of the efforts to retain DeVries.
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