West Virginia men’s basketball team spent this season playing under interim coach Josh Eilert. Now, the Mountaineers are ready to find a permanent replacement for Bob Huggins.
Mountaineers athletic director Wren Baker announced Wednesday that Eilert is out as coach and that a national search was underway. West Virginia went 9-23 and lost to Cincinnati in the first round of the Big 12 tournament on Tuesday.
“All of Mountaineer Nation owes a debt of gratitude to Coach Eilert for his leadership during a challenging season, as he and his staff faced all obstacles with class and professionalism,” Baker said in a statement released by the school. “We are now focused on our collective future, and I am excited about what comes next.”
The program was thrown into chaos last June after Huggins, who had coached the Mountaineers for 16 seasons, was arrested for DUI in Pittsburgh. That happened about a month after he made anti-gay slurs in a live interview on a Cincinnati radio show. A resignation letter from Huggins was sent out from the school, but Huggins contended it was “a false statement” and that he should have kept his job.
Eilert was put in a near impossible situation in the wake of the Huggins resignation saga. The longtime support staffer had only been a bench assistant for one year and suddenly had to hold together a reeling program just months before the season began. West Virginia had high expectations after going heavy in the transfer portal, but instead saw Tre Mitchell, Joe Toussaint and Jose Perez leave the program after Eilert’s appointment. RaeQuan Battle missed the start of the season due to ineligibilty, Jesse Edwards fought through injuries, and a program that had a top-15 offense and reached the NCAA Tournament in 2022-23 sputtered from start to finish. The assumption was always that Eilert would be a caretaker for a season before a full coaching search this offseason. Unfortunately, he never had much to work with. The team lost its final six games and 10 of its final 11.
West Virginia is expected to move quickly in its search and could target such names as Florida Atlantic’s Dusty May, Appalachian State’s Dustin Kerns and James Madison’s Mark Byington.
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(Photo of Josh Eilert: Jay Biggerstaff / Getty Images)
