By SAM LANCE
West Virginia coach Josh Eilert may have the “interim” tag on his contract, but it hasn’t stopped him from planning for long-term success. Eilert has been a Mountaineer staff member for 16 years now, and he doesn’t plan on going anywhere anytime soon.
“Yeah, there’s an interim tag,” Eilert said at Big 12 Media Day. “I’m mindful of that. But the way I see it, I’m the head coach for a 10-month period. It’s come down to about six more months on my contract. But I plan on being here. Our assistants, we’ve got a great group of young assistants that are eager every day, and we’re building a culture and we plan on being here.”
Eilert was thrown into the fold as interim head coach after Bob Huggins resigned from the head coaching role due to a DUI arrest in June. Since then, Eilert has faced a plethora of challenges just to get a team together and ready for the 2023-24 season.
“Mid-summer we didn’t have five or six guys on our roster, and we had to keep those guys and that foundation together,” Eilert said. “We had to figure out how we build and move on each and every day.”
Now that the waters have settled, Eilert has been able to lock in and get down to business. Part of that has been getting back to practice, but Eilert has also focused his energy on the recruiting trail.
And even with the uncertainty surrounding who will be the head coach for the 2024-25 season, Eilert is still working as if he’ll have the job.
“On the recruiting trail, we just sell what we have,” Eilert said. “And we have a great group of guys that want to work every day and bring the energy every day and a staff that guys are going to gravitate towards. We tell a lot of them, we have one of the best staffs for individual development in the country, and I really think we do.”
Eilert continued.
“We sell that to those guys, and we’re going to keep recruiting and put ourselves in a position to have this job in a year. And I know — I’m mindful enough to know that we’ve got to win games, and we will win games, but we’re going to recruit for the future, as well.”
West Virginia currently has no commitments for the class of 2024 or 2025. However, the Mountaineers are involved with several 2024 prospects like top-50 small forward Naas Cunningham, four-star point guard Del Jones and three-star shooting guard Jahseem Felton, as well as several 2025 prospects including top-10 prospect Jasper Johnson.
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