WVU women's hoop coach search underway

“I know it hurts and it stings when you lose a coach after one year, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with West Virginia. I never got a sense that this coaching staff felt like there was anything wrong with the program. We constantly benchmark (monetary support and facilities) for the program, and we are pretty well in the top half of the conference in just about everything. Our facilities are great, the way we travel is near the top, our salaries are roughly in the top half. We’ll take time to benchmark that again. I want to get everyone in the top half, and then once we achieve that, get into the top fourth. Women’s basketball is one that we put resources into to be competitive, and we’ll keep working on that.”

Related: Plitzuweit takes Minnesota job

Baker has already begun the search for a new coach – or at least in gathering information on potential candidates and collecting input on their perspectives on the program from the outside. Noting that he will never turn down data and information that will help him do his job, he is also similarly wide open in assessing those who might wind up being considered for the position.

“We have spent five or six hours (on Sunday) starting the process of mining for candidates, he noted. “I am fairly open, and we will look at all candidate profiles. I have hired a lot of coaches, something close to 20, in my career, and five of them have been basketball. I’ve hired coaches from different backgrounds. We’ll probably be looking at head coaches from mid-majors and low majors, and head and assistant coaches from the higher-end leagues. We are combing through all 31 leagues for candidates.”

Baker, as might be expected, isn’t identifying anyone as a targeted candidate yet, but he also admitted to that he knew one of the finalists from last year’s search, and would also be talking to the previous holder of the job, at least in the information-gathering process.

“It would be early too speculate on candidates, but I am familiar with (Glenville State head coach) Kim Stephens,” Baker said after a roundabout query about a social media swell of support for her as a candidate. “I would not identify anyone as a candidate yet. We probably won’t be ready to do that until the end of the week or early in next week. It would be premature to identify anyone as a candidate right now. But, I am familiar with her background.

"I coached in Division II and I have a lot of respect for wins at any level. We are going to cast a wide net and consider a lot of profiles."

Another name that popped up from a query in Baker's meeting with the media on Monday afternoon was that of Mike Carey.

"I have not had a chance to meet with (Mike) Carey, but I probably will try to talk to him to get his thoughts on the program. I’m not ready yet to talk about candidacy for the job, because it’s still early in the process. Any conversation we have right now will be about learning about the job.”

Baker was also fairly open in describing the search process, noting that this week will consist largely of “mining” for candidates, then beginning to narrow down the resulting list and identifying those that might be considered for the job. At that time, a subset of the group working on the initial identification stages will also be streamlined, with a handful involved in the interview process. To get to that point from here, however, will involve a lot of people with varying backgrounds and areas of expertise.

“We will have an in-house diverse committee of people with a lot of historical knowledge of WVU and people with a broad knowledge of sports,” he said of those who will populate the search team. “I want people who will challenge me, and I can tell you that from our meeting yesterday that we don’t have any “yes people” on it. That committee is still growing, but maybe by Wednesday it will narrow considerably, and there will be a smaller group that will go and do the interviews.

“We’re already getting inundated with calls and texts and emails, and I’m not talking about tens. I am talking about hundreds," WVU's first-year AD maintained. "We have not identified a search firm yet, but we probably will use one. I have always used a search firm -- not to hire the coach, I will do that – but search firms can cut a lot of time down in doing reference checks and background checks and facilitate the process of sorting through the candidates. They can [save a lot of time]. We have not identified a firm yet, though.”

That is another item on Baker’s To Do list, the size and scope of which has led him to cancel almost every meeting he has on his calendar for the next fortnight, at least. While he won’t share an expected timeline for a hire, rightly noting that putting one out and then failing to meet it would lead to unwarranted and unnecessary criticism, he did acknowledge that he wants to conclude the process and make a hire as quickly as possible, not only to get the program moving again but in consideration of the current team members, who have clearly been left hanging by Plitzuweit’s run home.

“It’s hard to speculate on what the ladies in program will do,” he said of those with eligibility remaining. “Dawn informed me Saturday in mid-morning that she was leaving, and then I met with them, and told them this program is about a lot of people, but it‘ s centered around student-athletes. I feel confident the opportunities for success here are as good as anywhere else out there, and that I hope that they will stay. We love them and want them to stay here.”