Between The Eers: Wren Baker Doesn't Miss
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00:03 Good Wednesday morning, everyone.
00:11 Skylar Callett here with Mountaineers Now.
00:13 This is another episode of Between the Ears.
00:17 West Virginia's coaching search well underway.
00:20 And Wren Baker, the athletic director at WVU,
00:23 is going to be paying close attention
00:25 to a number of games in the NCAA tournament.
00:28 There's about four, really, coaches, maybe even three,
00:34 that have been tied to this West Virginia
00:36 job for quite some time.
00:38 There have been some others that have been tied to it
00:40 in the past.
00:42 And they could maybe, perhaps, get back on that list
00:45 or on West Virginia's radar.
00:47 And I actually did an article today highlighting
00:52 some of those coaches that maybe could pop back
00:55 onto Wren Baker's list or maybe climb up Wren Baker's list.
00:59 So if you want to check that out, go to mountaineersnow.com.
01:03 You can see that list.
01:04 There's four coaches there.
01:06 That's not including the four that are and have been heavily
01:09 tied to this job.
01:10 But we're not really going to talk
01:12 about specific candidates today.
01:15 We're really going to talk about just Wren Baker,
01:19 entrusting Wren Baker in this decision.
01:23 There's been a lot of uncertainty,
01:28 I guess, with this whole coaching search.
01:30 Is he going to get the right guy?
01:31 Is he going to be able to nail this hire?
01:34 Because it's a big one.
01:36 I mean, West Virginia basketball has
01:38 been a very successful program for a number of years
01:43 now under two head coaches with John Beeline and Bob Huggins.
01:47 And you could probably even go back further than that.
01:49 You have Gail Catlett years.
01:51 I mean, there's just been a long history of success
01:57 with this program.
01:58 Obviously, you're coming off of an on-win season.
02:01 It was just full of ridiculousness, much of which
02:06 was out of their control.
02:07 But you don't want to see this program take that step back.
02:12 And what we saw in '23-'24 end up being the new norm.
02:16 And I don't think, even with a coaching hire that
02:20 doesn't go right, you're not going
02:22 to see what took place in '23-'24 consistently.
02:25 I mean, that was just a complete outlier.
02:28 They're never going to win nine games.
02:30 It's just not going to happen, unless something
02:32 like this takes place again.
02:34 But we're not going to put those vibes into the air.
02:39 But I do think that what West Virginia fans can bank on
02:44 is Wren's hit rate with his hires.
02:47 And it's not just his hires.
02:49 It's his ability to put the resources into the program
02:54 to where he can create success.
02:58 You go back to when he was at Northwest Missouri State,
03:03 Ben McCollum was already there.
03:04 He did not hire Ben McCollum.
03:06 But before Baker got there, it wasn't like McCollum
03:12 had all this success.
03:14 He gets there, and all of a sudden,
03:16 things are turning around.
03:18 And it was because of the resources.
03:20 It was because of the confidence that Wren had in Ben.
03:24 It was a number of things.
03:27 But they were able to get that program turned around
03:30 and really, really turned around.
03:32 Ben McCollum's one of the top coaches in the country
03:35 now at his level.
03:36 And I think a lot of people would
03:39 say that Wren probably played a big part in that
03:41 in getting that program to where it is now.
03:45 You go to him hiring Mark Kellogg the first time.
03:52 Seemed to be a pretty good hire, so much
03:54 that he got a bigger job.
03:57 And Wren comes to West Virginia, and eventually, he
04:01 hires Kellogg again.
04:03 And in his first season, Mark Kellogg
04:05 takes West Virginia to an NCAA tournament.
04:09 They had a three-way tie for fourth place
04:11 in the women's Big 12 standings.
04:14 Pretty good hire.
04:16 You look at what he did in North Texas.
04:19 He hired Grant McCaslin.
04:21 I'd say that hire worked out pretty damn good, right?
04:24 Because he ended up becoming the next tech coach at Texas Tech.
04:27 And guess what?
04:28 In his first year, Grant McCaslin
04:31 took the Red Raiders to the NCAA tournament.
04:33 So there is a history of success with Baker and his hires.
04:38 And it's here in West Virginia, too, again, with Mark Kellogg.
04:42 So I don't think there needs to be this panic, or this worry,
04:47 or this anxiety that it's not going to be a good hire.
04:51 For me, more than anything, it's how good
04:55 is this hire going to be?
04:57 Because I don't think that Wren's going to get this wrong.
05:01 It's just a matter of how much is he going to get it right?
05:04 Like, it's going to be a good hire,
05:06 but is it going to be a good hire?
05:08 Or is it going to be like, holy crap,
05:10 he knocked this one out of the park, and all of a sudden,
05:13 this next tech coach is one of the best 10,
05:16 15 coaches in college basketball.
05:19 He's got an eye for this stuff.
05:22 And I think that if he plays his cards right, which
05:25 I think he probably will, this is
05:28 going to be a really, really good hire for West Virginia
05:32 long term.
05:34 Now, we talked about it a couple of days ago,
05:38 I think, about Dusty May and that whole debacle of,
05:42 do you kind of stay away from him at arm's length
05:45 because he may be waiting for the Indiana job?
05:47 The hell with that.
05:48 I mean, again, if he's the guy for the job, you go and hire.
05:52 You don't worry about what the hell somebody else is going
05:55 to do in their coaching situation.
05:58 You go and hire the best guy for the job at that time.
06:01 You can't go and base your search off of hypotheticals.
06:05 You can only go off of what you know.
06:07 What you know is your head coaching job is open.
06:09 And if he's the guy, you bring him in.
06:12 However, if you see striking similarities
06:18 in terms of potential between Dusty May and, say,
06:24 Derry DeVries, or Pat Kelsey, or one of those other mid-major
06:29 coaches that's a little bit younger, maybe not as high up
06:32 on other people's lists, if it's neck and neck,
06:37 I think that is when you probably
06:39 take a look at that situation and say, you know what?
06:44 Maybe Pat Kelsey's not holding on for something else.
06:47 And maybe same thing with Darien, or Nico Medved,
06:53 or whoever, or Mark Byington.
06:57 And if you take that into consideration,
06:59 I think that's probably when you lean in that direction
07:03 with the other guys and not Dusty May.
07:07 But I don't think that plays into it at all.
07:09 But regardless of which direction they go in,
07:14 this is a--
07:16 I almost kind of want to call it like a sleeping giant.
07:19 Because yes, there's been those years of success.
07:23 There was the years where they got to the Final Four.
07:27 But I was back in the Big East years.
07:28 And they had that run there with Javon Carter and Daxter Miles,
07:32 where they went to the Sweet 16 a couple of times,
07:34 went to the Big 12 Championship three straight years.
07:38 They've been to the tournament a number of times.
07:40 But I would argue that they haven't really broken through
07:45 in the Big 12 quite yet.
07:47 They haven't gotten all the way there.
07:51 And when you look at the resources in terms of,
07:57 goodness gracious, the NIL pool is continuing to grow.
08:01 And in this day and age, that's key.
08:06 And I think, again, as I've stated with even the football
08:09 team, I think because of NIL, West Virginia
08:12 is going to be able to compete maybe even more than ever.
08:16 Because of that passionate fan base that can absolutely just
08:19 pour into the pockets of these kids.
08:25 So that's first.
08:25 You have the NIL.
08:28 Secondly, you have a world class practice facility.
08:34 World class.
08:37 I'm telling you right now, that practice facility
08:41 is better than--
08:42 I don't want to put an exact number on it.
08:44 I only want to say half.
08:47 But there are less attractive or less impressive NBA practice
08:55 facilities than West Virginians.
08:58 I know that for a fact.
09:01 This is an NBA quality, state of the art practice facility.
09:06 You say, what's that mean?
09:07 Is that really going to mean-- yes.
09:10 When recruits come on visits and they see this,
09:13 it opens their eyes and think, oh my gosh,
09:16 this is a place that takes basketball seriously.
09:20 And I've got all this to my advantage.
09:22 I can go to the gym whenever, as much as I want.
09:27 Free open access.
09:30 And there's a ton of things in there
09:32 outside of just the practice gym and all that stuff
09:34 that they have at their disposal.
09:37 And then you have the fan base, which has been
09:39 talked about a number of times.
09:42 But this fan base is extremely passionate.
09:46 We already know this.
09:48 But if you-- and it kind of ties back into that first point
09:52 with the NIL.
09:54 The more this coach wins and wins early,
09:58 the more that NIL pot is going to continue to grow.
10:02 The more that NIL pot continues to grow,
10:05 the more you're going to be able to go out and get
10:07 guys in the transfer portal.
10:08 And let's be honest.
10:10 It's going to be a hell of a lot easier
10:13 to build a championship caliber roster in men's basketball
10:16 than it is football.
10:18 And that's not a knock on NIL.
10:19 That's not a knock on Drew Fabianich and all the guys
10:23 over there, because they've done a good job managing it
10:25 to this point.
10:26 But you're talking 13, 14 guys as opposed to 85 plus.
10:33 So you can spend more money on less players
10:36 and form you a championship caliber team.
10:42 I really believe this job is a kind of a sleeping giant,
10:47 like I said.
10:49 Ren Baker is going to hit on this hire.
10:52 There's no question about it that he is going
10:54 to make contact with the bat.
10:57 No question.
11:00 The question is, is this an eye seeing single?
11:04 Is this a double in the gap?
11:07 Or is it a grand slam that clears the stadium
11:11 and it crosses the street?
11:14 That's kind of where I'm at on this.
11:17 We don't know.
11:18 And even when the hire is made, we won't know then.
11:22 It's going to be two, three, four years down the road
11:24 before we really know what type of a hit Ren
11:28 Baker just got off that bat.
11:31 But the one thing I can say is you got to trust.
11:34 You have to trust Ren Baker.
11:37 If you look at his history, and even look at it here,
11:39 like I said with Markeloff, you've
11:42 got to feel confident about this.
11:44 There's no way that he's going to take a hack at the plate
11:49 and look back and see the ball in the catcher's mitt.
11:53 It's not going to happen.
11:55 So that's going to do it for me here today on Between Years.
11:58 I'm Scott LaCalle.
11:59 And make sure you hit that Subscribe button
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12:09 And we'll be back here tomorrow with another episode.
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