WVU Basketball
Wren Baker Believes in WVU Basketball Brand Despite Recent Roller Coaster
Having four head coaches in four years can hurt the perception of any program, but West Virginia’s director of athletics Wren Baker still believes the WVU basketball brand is one that makes serving as its leader a position any coach should covet.
Even though Baker spent most of his Wednesday press conference discussing Darian DeVries’ departure and his plans for yet another WVU coaching search, he also made sure to explain why he still believes in the program and why it’s a far better brand than some may perceive it to be based on recent years.
“This is a great, great job. It’s a great community, it’s a great state and it’s a place filled with some of the best people that I’ve ever had the chance to know. The next coach here is going to be extremely fortunate and lucky to be our coach, and, hopefully, they are going to come in and really work to build a program and put down roots,” said a passionate Baker at the open of his talk with the media.
And when you take into account, the history of the program, the facilities, the work of WVU’s NIL collective Country Roads Trust and the school’s standing in the Big 12 Conference, a Power Four conference that earns even more respect in basketball than football, there’s reason for Baker to feel he can make a sold sales pitch to perspective coaches.
West Virginia has 31 NCAA Tournament appearances (about to be 32), has advanced to the Sweet 16 on 11 occasions, the Elite Eight three times and made a pair of Final Fours. In addition to the NCAA Tournament history, WVU has won 13 conference tournaments and claims a national championship from the 1942 season.
Baker also didn’t away from recognizing the situation and the unfortunate circumstances that led to him having to conduct another search after only one year with the coach he thought was the right guy to bring longterm stability and success back to the Mountaineers. But instead, DeVries decided to take what he’s referred to as his “dream job” and leave West Virginia for Indiana.
WVSN photo by Mike Asti
Baker said WVU was prepared to make very competitive offers to retain DeVries before he ultimately reached a deal with Indiana University.
“I was prepared to continue to invest in the program and am prepared to continue to do that,” Baker said. “Coach DeVries and I had several conversations and we were prepared to invest in him and his staff and had been talking about that for several weeks.”
Baker said he first sat down with DeVries’s agent as early as February to discuss the possibility of a new contract. By that time, WVU had already notched marquee wins over Gonzaga, Kansas and Iowa State.
“I think I first talked to his agent in early February and said we wanted to make sure that we rewarded his success,” Baker said. “I sat down with him several times over the last few weeks to talk about his contract, his compensation and what we could do.”
DeVries’s name had been brought up in a number of other coaching searches around the country, but Baker felt good about WVU retaining him until Indiana started to show interest.
“Pretty much every job that was open inquired to see if he would have interest,” Baker said. “To my knowledge, he only talked to one, so I don’t think it was a situation where he didn’t feel good about here. There were probably things about Indiana that were very attractive to him.”
“There were a lot of jobs that called that I know he declined to speak with. Maybe there were only two or three jobs that could’ve pried him away and one of them came along.”
The exact details of DeVries’s contract with Indiana have not yet been released, but it is reportedly a six-year deal that would pay him nearly $5 million per season. IU already made a major financial commitment to DeVries by paying WVU more than $6 million to buy out his contract.
Baker said he was able to pull together the resources to make a competitive offer to keep DeVries but was not given the opportunity to counter what Indiana offered.
“It was competitive and I made it clear to him that I would like a chance to counter if there was an offer that came from Indiana,” Baker said. “Just the way it unfolded, we didn’t get that chance.
“We had a lot of donors over the course of the last few weeks who were very interested in keeping Darian DeVries and continuing to build on what we were doing. I do think we could’ve made a competitive counteroffer. What that could’ve ultimately done, I don’t know but I wanted a chance to do that and it just didn’t work out. By the time he had the offer (from Indiana), I think he was pretty set on that that’s what he was going to do.”
While Baker certainly did not want to see DeVries leave, he said the $6 million WVU will be getting from Indiana for his buyout puts West Virginia in a strong position this hiring cycle.
“I think we were very aggressive in trying to make sure that Darian knew that we were going to do whatever it took for our program to be competitive in the Big 12, which makes you competitive nationally,” Baker said. “What we have allocated for staff and budget and what we were willing to do for him were all very competitive in the Big 12. We laid that vision out and, ultimately, it wasn’t enough.
“I’m at peace that we were aggressive in trying to retain him and, ultimately, I recognize that it’s not my decision to make, he gets to make that.”
For related content, On a recent episode of Mountaineer Report, Mike Asti and Cody Nespor offered their thoughts about what Baker had to say and where they believe WVU basketball is as a brand right now.
