WVU AD Baker Talks Honoring Bob Huggins in Future

West Virginia’s Director of Athletics Wren Baker introduced men’s basketball interim head coach Josh Eilert on Monday afternoon. Baker was asked about Bob Huggins and how the whole situation went down over the past 10 days.

Baker said that Huggins did make mistakes over the past six weeks but has already been in talks of honoring the Basketball Hall of Fame coach in the future.

“Absolutely. We probably haven’t gotten far enough along to discuss the particulars of that but we have already talked about ways we could potentially have him back to honor him at some point. That will undoubtedly happen,” Baker said. “That will be a time of celebrating a legacy and remembering the good times together.”

Throughout the press conference, Baker and Eilert praised Huggins for two important he is to the state and West Virginia University. After Huggins’ resignation two weekends ago, people wondered whether or not the Hall of Famer would be around the program.

“I don’t think I would ever say hey you’ve got to stay away. I think when you have somebody like that who the fans love, that’s not the right course of action,” Baker said. “My only encouragement to him was to get healthy.”

“Time has a way of healing all wounds,” Baker added.

Huggins won 935 career games spanning five coaching tenures at Walsh College, Akron, Cincinnati, Kansas State, and West Virginia. Huggins returned to his alma mater in 2007, taking the Mountaineers to their second Final Four in school history in 2010. Huggins finishes second in all-time coaching wins at WVU, with 345 wins. Huggins was enshrined into the Basketball Hall of Fame in September 2022.

Eilert will be taking over Huggins’ duties in an interim position. West Virginia University will evaluate Eilert at the end of the season and then conduct a national search.