BIG 12 CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL TIPOFF MEDIA DAY

October 18, 2023

Josh Eilert

West Virginia Mountaineers

Media Day Press Conference

JOSH EILERT: First and foremost, I'm very grateful and thankful to be here in this position. To carry the torch at West Virginia and follow a Hall of Fame coach is not lost on me. I'm excited for the opportunity, excited to help represent West Virginia and lead the charge.

We've had a couple good weeks of practice, and things are going well, and we're excited where the program is going.

Q. It's been kind of a whirlwind for you, how everything transpired. How have you settled in now, where you're going and what you need to get done at this point now?

JOSH EILERT: You know, we're practicing now, so this summer was a whirlwind, and we had a lot of distractions and trying to keep everybody with their head down and focused on what the goal was.

Mid-summer we didn't have five or six guys on our roster, and we had to keep those guys and that foundation together, and we had to figure out how we build and move on each and every day.

Waters have calmed down, but now it's just in time for practices heating up, and we're halfway through the preseason, and we're a couple weeks away from our first competition.

We're excited and we're eager. I think we've got a great group with a lot of chemistry, and it's building each and every day, and that's been at the forefront of building this culture and this program and getting it to where we need to go to be very competitive in this league.

Q. West Virginia has a lot of history with Cincinnati from the Big East days. What does that natural rivalry in terms of proximity do, and how has DerMarr Johnson been since you've taken over?

JOSH EILERT: It's nice to have -- I talked to Coach Miller and Coach Dawkins, and it's nice to have a couple more teams in our league in our time zone. The travel in this league, it can be a bear, and it certainly has been a bear for us at West Virginia because we were the outlier in the league.

Now we've got a couple more in our time zone and it's going to make things a little easier.

You mentioned DerMarr Johnson. He's been awesome from day one. He hasn't quite been there a year yet, but we hit it off from the beginning. And he's an ultra competitor. Every day he wants to compete, whether it be at pickleball or golf or whatever it may be. He's an ultra competitor. It rubs off on our guys. High-character guy that you can build a program around as an assistant, as well.

Q. Obviously you guys have been relatively active recruiting future classes this fall, despite some of the uncertainty. What went into the decision to do that, and how have you balanced explaining that uncertainty to recruits?

JOSH EILERT: Yeah, there's an interim tag. 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.

When we go out and recruit, that's the message that we portray to them.

On the recruiting trail, we just sell what we have, 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.

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.

Q. You talk about a guy like DerMarr Johnson, obviously with the new blocking charge rule that's been placed, DerMarr put out a tweet saying he took a couple charges in practice the other day and the league called and said they're not calling that anymore. Could you just walk us through that conversation with him a little bit more?

JOSH EILERT: Yeah, DerMarr needs to get in the weight room a little bit more. I think he's a little allergic to the weight room, so he took that charge a little harder than most of us would.

No, but it's been fun. He's the type of guy -- each of our assistants are the type of guys, they don't even need to stretch. There's one opportunity that I saw in practice, and when we only had 10 guys, and one of them was cramping up and I looked the other way and DJ is running down the floor. We didn't skip a beat.

One of my assistants just jumped in. They're ready to go. That's part of having a young group of guys that are ready to go and are excited to play the game.

Those guys are all still young enough to jump out on the floor and mix it up with our guys.

Q. You've been around this program a little bit long enough that you were part of West Virginia's program in the athletic department when they made the transition to this league. You touched on the four newcomers. Have you had any advice to those teams to give them transitioning to the Big 12, what would it be, about joining the conference and making your way in, style of play, geography, whatever that may be?

JOSH EILERT: You've got to manage your rest. That would be the biggest advice I have, especially in January, February, on those short nights and those long trips. There was so many times we got home at 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning and you turn around and you're playing two days later. It's a game within a game, managing your rest, managing your travel, making sure you're doing right by your guys because as a coaching staff, if you feel it and you're worn down, just think about your guys and how they feel because they're the ones competing night in and night out.