West Virginia's Baker is 'resilient' after NCAA Tournament snub and losing DeVries to Indiana

First, West Virginia was a surprising omission from the NCAA Tournament. Then, the Mountaineers lost their coach.

It's been a lousy week for a school now facing its third men's basketball coaching change in 21 months, all occurring since Wren Baker became West Virginia's athletic director. He has become accustomed to challenges and unsettling times.

“I’m resilient,” Baker said Wednesday.

The latest blow came Tuesday when Indiana hired away Darian DeVries after he spent a little less than a year with the Mountaineers. Baker said he wanted the chance to make a competitive counteroffer to DeVries, but “just the way it unfolded, we didn’t get that chance. I’m at peace that we were aggressive in trying to retain him.”

West Virginia already was reeling because it's season was over, having been overlooked, along with Indiana, by the NCAA Tournament selection committee on Sunday.

So Baker is doing the only thing he knows how, and that's moving forward — and quickly. Yes, Baker was “extraordinarily disappointed” after the NCAA snub. But he believes a program that beat three top-10 teams in The Associated Press poll this season and had six Quad-1 wins despite a complete roster makeover will be attractive to the next coach.

DeVries earned $2.8 million this past season. Baker said West Virginia will receive more than $6 million from Indiana, fulfilling a buyout clause in DeVries’ contract with the Mountaineers as well as other obligations such as moving costs because the coach left during what was still the first year of his contract. What West Virginia decides to do with that windfall remains to be seen.

"Really my only focus right now is to get a basketball coach and then figure out what’s the best thing to do with that money coming in,” Baker said.

Baker was faced with a similar situation in 2023 after women's basketball coach Dawn Plitzuweit left after one season. He hired Mark Kellogg from Stephen F. Austin and Kellogg has taken the Mountaineers to two straight NCAA Tournaments.

The men's coaching carousel began after Bob Huggins resigned in June 2023 following a drunken driving arrest and a month after he used an anti-gay slur while also denigrating Catholics during a radio interview. Josh Eilert, a Huggins assistant, was picked as interim coach for the 2023-24 season and the Mountaineers lost a school-record 23 games. Then DeVries was hired and seemed like the perfect fit, until it wasn't.

But Baker said he believes the hiring process he's used over a career that includes a six-year stint as athletic director at North Texas "has paid off over the long run. You can get hung up that you lost a coach after one year. I don't think that you can just second-guess everything about your process. You try and learn from it.”

Baker refused to disclose who he might be interested in hiring as the next coach. He still has a list of some candidates who were vetted before DeVries' hiring and might be available this time around.

“I hope our underclassmen give our new coach a chance to come in and give them a recruiting pitch," Baker said. “I can promise them we’ll be resource competitive within the Big 12 and nationally, and we’ll find a coach who’s committed to them and committed to this university and this state. We have a great basketball tradition.”

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