Between The Eers: A Hat Tip to Wren Baker
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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Good Friday morning, everybody.
00:12 Scott Callen here.
00:13 On between the ears, it is past Friday,
00:15 so we will have a shorter episode today.
00:18 But that doesn't mean that this isn't a quality
00:24 seven to eight minutes or so,
00:26 whatever this is gonna be of content,
00:29 talking about the West Virginia
00:30 athletic director, Ren Baker.
00:32 Thought we would give Ren his flowers today.
00:36 Just looking at what the basketball team has done
00:40 on the women's side, Mark Kellogg has done a phenomenal job.
00:44 If you haven't been following the Lady Mountaineers,
00:48 whew, they are fun to watch, man.
00:50 They have been absolutely killing it.
00:52 They're number 24 in the country right now.
00:54 Only two losses, I believe they're 14 and two
00:57 or something like that, five and two in conference play.
01:01 And a massive, massive game coming up on Saturday
01:06 against Iowa State at home.
01:09 And I would encourage you, if you have the opportunity
01:13 to make it over to the Coliseum on Saturday to support them,
01:16 they will greatly appreciate that.
01:19 And it's a massive game.
01:20 Like I said, they're fun to watch.
01:22 It's gonna be a very intense game.
01:26 And one that if they win, they'll be right in the mix
01:29 for the Big 12 title race.
01:31 So hats off, first of all, to Mark Kellogg,
01:36 to the Mountaineer women's basketball team
01:39 for the incredible start to the year that they've had.
01:45 And this is exactly why I wanna talk about Ren today,
01:51 because this man, I mean, my goodness, brother,
01:55 you have been through hell and back,
01:59 and then some, since stepping foot in Morgantown.
02:04 You come to Morgantown, you're dealing with
02:07 the struggling football program,
02:10 you don't know what to do with the coaching situation.
02:14 They ultimately decide, let's give Neil another year.
02:19 A lot of fans did not like that.
02:22 Turns out, so far, that was the right decision.
02:27 Football team, out of nowhere, goes and wins nine games,
02:31 starts to now look like they have something building there,
02:36 and have really set themselves up
02:39 for what could be a really special 2024 year.
02:43 You go to baseball.
02:48 No one really talks about baseball.
02:49 We talk about baseball here on "Between the Ears."
02:51 Shout out to JJ Weatherholt, by the way,
02:53 for becoming the Big 12's preseason
02:57 unanimous player of the year.
02:59 But Randy Mazey, head coach of the Mountaineers,
03:05 he's gonna step down as the skipper
03:08 after this upcoming season, hand it over to Steve Sabans.
03:11 But you gotta think about this.
03:15 When all this was going on,
03:17 you had kind of a lot of things happening at WVU, right?
03:21 You had the Bob Huggins thing.
03:23 There's the basketball search.
03:25 What do you do there?
03:27 And then Randy Mazey comes to him and says,
03:29 "Hey, I'm thinking about stepping down."
03:32 And if you're Ren Baker, you gotta be like,
03:38 you gotta be kidding me, man.
03:40 (laughs)
03:41 The one program that is stable at the moment,
03:45 the one program that has got a ton of success at the moment,
03:48 they're coming off a Big 12 championship,
03:51 and I've got to worry about replacing you too.
03:53 And they worked some things out.
03:57 Steve Sabans is now the skipper there,
04:01 is the skipper in waiting.
04:03 So, little insight there.
04:08 Sabans was actually offered,
04:10 or I don't know if he was actually offered,
04:12 but he was gaining interest, excuse me,
04:15 in the job at Cincinnati.
04:19 And West Virginia didn't want to lose him.
04:22 Randy Mazey, being the stellar guy that he is,
04:28 wanted Steve to be his successor at West Virginia,
04:31 and felt like that was the best way for this program
04:35 to keep going in the direction it has.
04:38 So, he caught a little bit of a break there,
04:42 but still, it was another thing
04:44 on the long list of things to deal with.
04:47 And obviously, the Bob Huggins stuff, right?
04:50 You have the radio incident, you have the DUI,
04:53 then you have the decision of whether or not
04:56 to fire Huggins.
04:58 Well, he sent in his resignation letter,
05:02 or maybe he did, I don't know, somebody knows.
05:05 Anyways, he steps away as the head coach.
05:09 Then you got to do an accelerated coaching search
05:14 in the summer, and he picks Josh Eilert to be the interim,
05:19 versus going the actual full-time permanent coach route,
05:25 which I, looking at it at the time,
05:30 and even still looking back at it now,
05:33 I think was the right decision.
05:35 You can't make a decision on a whim like that
05:37 when there's coaches and assistants
05:41 that are not really in the position to move
05:44 at that point in time,
05:45 and to best keep the roster together.
05:50 And I get it, it hasn't been a great season.
05:53 It hasn't turned out to be what everyone thought,
05:55 due to injuries, due to suspensions,
05:58 due to eligibility issues.
06:00 But had the team not been able to stay together,
06:06 even through what they have gone through,
06:10 I mean, this team could be filled
06:13 with a bunch of O-free Navays,
06:15 and that's no offense to O-free.
06:17 It's just saying that this team could be filled
06:19 with a bunch of 18-year-old kids
06:21 that had no real interest from a lot of other major schools,
06:26 and that it had to take them.
06:29 But, anyways,
06:32 Bren Baker has done a lot of good
06:36 for this athletic program at WVU.
06:40 He's really helped stabilize the NIL situation.
06:44 I guess, in some ways, he can't really say
06:48 that he's hands-on with it,
06:49 but he's made it a priority to make sure
06:54 that there are opportunities in place
06:58 for the student athletes to make a name for themselves
07:02 off and on and off the court.
07:04 And I just think we can't speak enough
07:08 about the job that Bren Baker has done.
07:10 And here in a couple of months,
07:13 he's going to have another decision to make,
07:14 obviously with the men's basketball coach position.
07:18 But the one thing I would say is,
07:23 you can trust this guy, all right?
07:25 So far, he's two for two.
07:28 He nailed the decision on the women's coach, on Mark Kellogg.
07:36 He nailed the decision so far on keeping Neil Brown.
07:40 And I would even go out there and say,
07:42 hey, even though it's not a big-time sport,
07:44 he stole a really damn good volleyball coach
07:50 from, I think, Washington State.
07:54 So, I mean, and everybody,
07:57 everybody around the country was talking about that hire.
08:00 So, trust Bren Baker.
08:06 If you're still skeptical of trusting the client,
08:09 look, I get it.
08:10 It's been one year, I get it.
08:13 But since Bren Baker has been in Morgantown,
08:16 that man has made right decision
08:18 after right decision after right decision.
08:20 So, Bren, hang in there, brother.
08:24 Hang in there.
08:25 It's going to get a little smoother.
08:27 The waters will calm down, we assume.
08:29 It can't get much worse
08:31 in terms of all these crazy situations that are happening.
08:36 But that's where we were going to go with our Fast Friday,
08:41 a little hat tip to Bren Baker
08:44 for the job that he has done
08:46 since becoming the athletic director at West Virginia.
08:49 And like I said, if you're still worried
08:52 about what's going to happen
08:53 with the men's basketball program or anything like that,
08:58 no need.
08:59 Bren's a basketball guy.
09:01 He knows how to hire people.
09:03 When he was in North Texas,
09:05 I mean, they were stout.
09:08 Greg McCaslin was the men's basketball coach there.
09:11 He hired him at North Texas.
09:12 He's now the head coach at Texas Tech.
09:14 So, Bren Baker knows a thing or two about some basketball.
09:18 So don't worry about that.
09:19 So we're going to have plenty of talk,
09:22 obviously, in the upcoming weeks and months
09:24 about the basketball job.
09:26 Maybe even talk about it Monday or Tuesday on here.
09:29 So, but that'll do it for us here today on Fast Friday.
09:32 Between the Ears, make sure you hit the subscribe button
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09:36 Give us a like.
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09:43 at the same handle, Mountain Ears Now.
09:46 And we will be back tomorrow
09:48 to recap the West Virginia-Oklahoma State game
09:51 on the Mountain Ears Now postgame show
09:53 presented by Country Roads Air Duct Cleaning.
09:56 Thank you guys for tuning in another week
09:58 of episodes here on Between the Ears.
10:00 And we'll catch you back here tomorrow
10:01 for the postgame show.
10:03 Take care.
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