Save for a few framed pictures and some finger paintings from his young children perched on the mantle of his fireplace, Josh Eilert’s office in the WVU basketball practice facility is still rather bare.
A thick binder filled with WVU’s plays sits in a file organizer on top of a cabinet that otherwise is empty.
“My six year old insisted I put those up,” Eilert said of the finger paintings. “How do you turn down a six year old?”
One train of thought would have you think the setting is fitting, because Eilert is only the Mountaineers’ interim head coach who is about to embark on a season that could go any number of ways.
It would be easy to say the journey begins Monday, the first day of full preseason practice for the 2023-24 season, yet Eilert, his staff and his players have seemingly already been on a journey of a thousand miles.
It began with a summer of confusion that saw former head coach Bob Huggins resign in June following a DUI arrest in Pittsburgh, but even that simple statement doesn’t come without controversy.
In the days that followed, Eilert was named the interim, charged with taking over a team with a roster that resembles very little of what it did a season ago, all while a legal battle between Huggins and WVU filled the background on whether or not he officially resigned in the first place.
Just to get to this first day of practice, Eilert had to decide on a staff, recruit new players to replace ones who had transferred, block out the noise that came with Huggins’ resignation and somehow put his stamp on a program that may or may not even be his seven months from now.
In a sit-down interview with The Dominion Post, Eilert discussed the ins and outs of it all, including his optimism for the new season, one in which he has completely changed the Mountaineers’ offense.
