Assistant Josh Eilert has been selected as an interim coach at West Virginia, interrupting a hectic week after Bob Huggins resigned following a drunk driving arrest.
Eilert, who has no prior head coaching experience, emerged as athletic director Wren Baker’s choice to guide the team through a challenging off-season trajectory. Baker stayed in-house and chose not to hire a full-time coach, given the limited ability to conduct a nationwide search in June and the urgency to find someone – anyone – with training starting in just four months.
“I’ve been talking to knowledgeable basketball people across the country over the past week, including coaches, professional basketball managers and others who I trust can identify a strong group of candidates to speak to,” Baker said in a statement announcing the move. Saturday night announced.
“What I eventually came to realize was that conducting this quest at the end of June was difficult for many of our candidates and it really put our talented student-athletes at a disadvantage as well.
That said, we will conduct our national search at the end of the 2023-24 season.”
Under NCAA rules, West Virginia players have 30 days to enter the transfer portal, and several have apparently chosen to do so, though they have the option to return. Eilert could be the glue holding together a senior squad built largely through transfers.
Bob Huggins resigned his job in West Virginia after his latest drunk driving arrest
Assistant Josh Eilert has been selected as an interim coach at West Virginia
“Josh Eilert is the right person to lead our men’s basketball program next season,” said Baker. “He has been an important part of our success and has demonstrated great integrity, work ethic and dedication. He has been involved in all facets of our program during his time on the basketball staff and has earned this opportunity to coach our team on an interim basis for the 2023-24 season.”
Eilert, 43, first joined Huggins in 2006 as a graduate assistant at Kansas State and followed him to West Virginia in 2007. will be named assistant coach in July 2022.
“I want to thank Wren Baker, President Gee, Rob Alsop, Steve Uryasz and the rest of our administration for believing in me and giving me the opportunity to lead our legendary Mountaineer basketball program,” said Eilert. “I also want to thank Coach Huggins for keeping me on his staff at K-State in 2006 and for bringing me to West Virginia in 2007. I have learned so much from Coach Huggins and it has been an honor to coach for a Hall of Fame for the last 17 years.’
Among others linked to the opening were UAB coach and former Huggins assistant Andy Kennedy, and former West Virginia and Michigan coach John Beilein.
Huggins had arguably amassed one of the better recruiting classes in the country from next season’s portal, including Syracuse center Jesse Edwards, Arizona guard Kerr Kriisa, Manhattan guards Jose Perez and Omar Silverio, and Montana State guard RaeQuan Battle.
Huggins had previously been charged with drunk driving while coaching at the University of Cincinnati
Huggins’ 16-year run as West Virginia coach ended with his resignation on June 17. The day before, he was charged with drunk driving in Pittsburgh. According to an indictment, Huggins initially thought he was in Columbus, Ohio. A breath test found that Huggins’ blood alcohol content was more than twice the legal limit. He has scheduled a preliminary hearing for Aug. 3 in Pittsburgh.
Huggins also pleaded no drink-driving in 2004 when he was a coach at Cincinnati. He was fired a year later amid a power struggle with the school’s president and the aftermath of the DUI arrest.
His resignation from West Virginia came a month after the university suspended him for three games for using an anti-gay slur and belittling Catholics during a radio interview.
Huggins, 69, was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame last September.
Jacque Huggins, the coach’s daughter, recently went on an angry Facebook rant directed at the school.
During her prolonged post on social mediaJacque called those in power at the university ‘cowards’, ‘underhanded’ and ‘hypocrites’ after her father’s resignation.
Jacque claimed the school gave Huggins a 30-minute ultimatum to resign or be fired
Even before his recent DUI, in which Huggins reportedly had a blood alcohol level nearly three times the legal limit, the Hall of Fame coach was already on the hotseat after making homophobic remarks to Xavier basketball fans.
‘Nasty [school president] Gordon Gee and your board, be better and do better,” Jacque wrote.
‘Throwing stones at greenhouses is also not how you represent such a great university.
Treating someone like they don’t matter after giving their heart and soul to your university?
“You could have helped, but chose to turn your back. Not just him, the guys, the staff, the boosters. Everyone.
“You are the classless, the cowards, the backstabbing, and above all, hypocrites. Remember the $24 million practice facility, which was not funded by the university in any way?
“The 17 million in your hospitals for cancer research? I can only pray that you never make another mistake like you did in the past for which you need to be crucified. Cue the state of Ohio. Enrollment down 30%, mountains of debt and too much more to list. Do your job you were told to do and bring WVU back.”
Jacque further claimed that the school gave Huggins a 30-minute ultimatum to resign or be fired, and gave an explanation as to why he had numerous empty beer cans in his car.
Bob Huggins’ daughter, Jacque, blasted West Virginia University in a lengthy social media diatribe
“He told Gordon and his board that he was going to rehab for 60 days to be able to stay for these guys,” her post continued. “The guys who don’t want to play for anyone else. That’s how much he cares. Refused. Not even considered. 100% no without thinking.
Also given 30 MINUTES to decide if he was fired or retired. But they want to preach this society of understanding and compassion. I didn’t make it through the bar, but I’m pretty sure there are strict laws against this. Once a mountaineer, always a mountaineer, right?’
“Besides the “beer cans all over the car,” the cans were in bags and not all beer cans, there’s a small group in Morgantown that knows my dad collects cans for recycling. Always have been, always will. That’s his thing.
“To pretend he was driving around pounding beer, as the media wants to portray, is absolutely absurd.
Society in this world we live in doesn’t always tell the truth.