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MORGANTOWN -- The last thing Josh Eilert wanted -- or needed -- was a personnel problem during the first week of practice for his West Virginia basketball team.
"My whole summer has been a complete challenge," he admitted on Tuesday during a scheduled media session.
Like what else could go wrong. The soap opera that wound up getting Bob Huggins' dismissed from his job as head coach and thrust Eilert, without so much as ever having coached a game, into the role of interim coach was challenging enough.
But then in the wake of the head coaching change, players began defecting and heading elsewhere, leaving Eilert to not only recruit his current players but go off and recruit others, a journey that sent off in building a roster that is almost half international in makeup.
Now he had to introduce not only himself and his system to the team, but one teammate to another.
Challenge? They kept growing. The NCAA has been holding back on the waiver request for RaeQuan Battle, who he and teammates are referring to as "a special player" and who may well have been the key to the season.
Then just this week, Eilert dismissed Jose Perez, whose career has been nothing but one controversy after another -- not of his doing -- as he spent all of last year sitting out when the NCAA refused to grant him the same transfer waiver Battle is trying to land.
Deemed a good person, good player, Perez spent last year following rules and earning a degree … but something went amiss early this year, Perez indicating it involved -- of all things -- an issue over attending study hall and he was dismissed from the team.
Perez categorized his treatment as his "being thrown to the street like a dead animal."
Eilert did not have much to say about the situation due to student secrecy rules, but it seemed to be an overreaction on his part, although many of the facts remain unknown.
In fact, on Tuesday, Eilert heaped praise upon Perez rather than being critical of him.
"I'm proud of Jose. He came in here and finished his undergraduate degree at West Virginia. Certainly, that's a priority for a student-athlete. But I can't go any further than that," he said.
But if this was in part about missing study hall, it begs to ask a rhetorical question and that is, "Why does a 25-year-old student who already has earned a degree and has not been trouble and in fact helped recruit players to the school, according to his statement on social media, have to attend study hall?"
And, of course, could this not have been worked around?
Eilert's reaction when that was suggested was interesting in that he kind of emphasized the strange position he finds himself in as Huggins' successor.
"I'm not going to get into that, but at the first team meeting I talked about the non-negotiables. There's a lot of non-negotiables and I'm not going to compromise the program and the culture of the program, so that's where I'm going to leave it and we're moving forward," he said.
"We have a group of good guys, everybody else on the roster has been doing things the right way. We're going to reward those guys and move forward."
He then went on to reiterate how he sees his role in rebuilding this team.
"I'm in charge of this basketball program and leading this basketball program, so I told all our guys I'm going to do what's in the best interest of everybody in the program … whether that be myself, the assistant coaches, all those players that are looking at me for leadership. I'm going to make the right decisions in the interest of everybody."
Still, he was looking at a situation where the decision did not impact just Perez, but the entire team.
"I think it is going to empower a lot of guys," Eilert said. "There's probably a lot of guys on the roster who felt like they were in the background, so to speak. Now they see they have an opportunity and those guys have done everything in the right way. I think it has empowered them and given them confidence to move forward and help this program."
Eilert also believes that the media and the fans might give more meaning to Perez's importance to the team than it really deserved.
"Jose was here 10 months and never played," he said. "We're acting like we have to fill a void we've never had. Sure, he was on the roster and we had every intention of him playing and be a part of this program, but everybody else was in the same boat.
"There was a lot of talk out there that he was a starter and this that and the other, but there was nothing to this point that I said or anybody said that promised he'd be on that level. We had a lot of guys competing.
"I'm not going to come in here on Day 1 and pigeonhole someone into a position they haven't earned yet."
At this stage of the rebuild, the culture of the team is still being established, and Eilert sees that as a crucial part of what he is trying to create.
"Chemistry and culture is first and foremost," he said. "I've seen some really good teams, talented teams, and you wonder how in the heck they are losing. They are losing mainly because there's chemistry issues, there's culture issues.
"Then you look at the flip side of that and see teams that don't nearly have that talent but are beating people because of their chemistry and culture; because everyone has bought into the program; everyone has bought into the staff; there's no arguments, we've all bought into this together and we're going to pull through because we're all rowing in the same direction.
"When you are building a program, that's where you are trying to get from Day 1. You have to build that trust, build that culture within the organization. You have to figure out who are the guys to lead the team and put them in place, come into work with a great attitude.
"That's where we are right now. I'm excited about the culture. I'm excited about the chemistry."