‘This is a Great Job’: AD Wren Baker on WVU Basketball

West Virginia AD Wren Baker talked highly about the WVU Basketball job, who he and his committee began an open search on Wednesday, moving on from interim HC Josh Eilert.

“This is a great basketball job. I mean a really, really strong program. Tremendous tradition, we’ve done it with multiple coaches over the years. Great facilities, I think it’s certainly a top 10, maybe top five basketball practice facility. The [WVU] Coliseum is an awesome venue,” Baker said to the media.

Baker is a huge fan of analytics, specifically KenPom. KenPom is one of the most used metric-based sites in college basketball. KenPom measures many different aspects of the game, including home-court advantage.

“If you look on KenPom, it measures possession efficiency so it goes all the way down to your possessions versus your opponents, and [vice versa],” Baker explained. “So KenPom, we’re No. 2 in the country in home court advantage so how they measure that is how we play at home every possession, how we play on the road every possession and how your opponents play in the coliseum every possession and how they play at home.”

West Virginia averaged a home attendance of 10,545 throughout this season. WVU finished with the most losses in a single season, but still had the fanbase supporting. For Baker, it’s something that he’s learned during his first year on the WVU job.

Baker went into detail about what he’s looking for in a candidate, letting the media pick his brain. Baker praised the defensive side of the ball, potentially targeting a defensive-minded coach.

“You have to be great defensively, period. I mean you look in this league over five years and every team that’s finished in the top half is generally top 50 in the country defensively,” Baker said. “Most generally, people who are that good defensively, value possessions. So they tend to play a little bit slower and they tend to value offensive possessions, not a lot of turnovers, high offensive efficiency.”

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