Submitted photo West Virginia interim head coach Josh Eilert shares an opinion with official Anthony Eades.

MORGANTOWN — Josh Eilert had gathered his team around him in the West Virginia basketball facility, the walls seemingly closing in on them.

If anyone in the nation had been the victim of events out of its control it was this Mountaineer team.

It started with the Bob Huggins soap opera that wound up with the Hall of Fame coach losing his job, followed by the coaching search that wound up with Eilert getting his on an interim basis, a compromise choice due more to timing than anything else.

Then there were a slew of transfers out, some transfers in building up hope.

More personnel shifts and then, as the season drew nearer and nearer, each passing day brought its own disaster, starting forward Akok Akok collapsing on the court in an exhibition game, now at home but still being tested and evaluated, definitely out for Monday night’s season opener against Missouri State.

A few days later Kerr Kriisa, a heralded transfer from Arizona brought in to run the new Mountaineer offense from the point, was ruled ineligible for the first nine games of the season due to accepting impermissible benefits while in Tucson.

Both schools were ruled free of any guilt, although WVU stresses that the infractions occurred while Kriisa was at Arizona.

It’s been a deluge of disaster, but now they can taste the beginning of the real season.

“It’s here … and we’re excited,” Eilert told the media on Thursday. “It came really fast. We’ve had a lot of challenges through the 40 days since we started practice. We might be a little shorthanded, but we’ve got guys I think we can count on; guys I’m excited to bat with.”

And so it was that he gathered them around him to deliver the message he wanted them to carry forward into the year.

“We certainly have our challenges, but I told the team the other day, ‘Don’t take the victim mentality,'” he said. “‘We are not victims. We have the opportunity in front of us and we are going to take advantage of our opportunity.”

It is, in some ways, the kind of challenge West Virginia believes it thrives on.

“West Virginia kind of operates with a chip on its shoulder. I’ve said this before, we feel like our backs are against the wall and we’re excited and we’re going to compete. That’s the only way we look at things.”

True the Mountaineers aren’t playing with a full deck, but it isn’t a deck of jokers, either.

Quinn Slazinski, a glib, talented transfer will move into Akok Akok’s role and Kobe Johnson will inherit the point guard spot from Kriisa.

“The coaches meeting this morning I said, ‘Guys, we’re about as low as it gets at this point.’ Certainly, it presents a challenge but within challenges and adversity come a lot of opportunities to learn and grow not only from a coaching standpoint for our staff trying to meet it head on, but also for our players.

“Yeah, it looks like everything is going against us right now, but maybe the tide is going start turning and things will start going our way. That’s the way we have to operate. We might get more challenges, but for now, we’ll just go out there and try to win the day.

“Today we are going to figure out how do we prepare ourselves with what we have to win Monday’s game.”

All this is weighing on Eilert as he is trying to fill the shoes of Bob Huggins, a bigger-than-life Hall of Fame coach.

“I think people know that,” Eilert said. “I have been presented a lot of challenges and like I told the guys, I am not a victim. I got presented an incredible opportunity to lead these young men and put them in a place where they can succeed.

“Certainly, I could hang my head every day but what good is that going to do? There’s a lot of people going through life every day going through a heck of a lot more challenges than what I’m going through on a basketball court. We haven’t even played a game yet. We don’t know who is going to rise to the occasion and step up.

“Like I said, opportunities are there. Step up and take advantage of them … including our staff, including the guys eight, nine and 10 in the rotation. They have to take advantage of them.”

And that begins with blocking out all outside pressures.

“Control what you can control,” Eilert said. “That’s helped me sleep at night from Day 1 of getting the job. Things outside of my control you just have to let go and control what you can control.”

The exhibition victory over George Mason proved to Eilert that nothing would be easy and that survival existed only in controlling what he could control and sticking to it.

“If I could take one thing from the game and if I could take one thing from it someone for whom I have a great respect was watching from afar and he said you guys showed a lot of resolve. I’ll take that. We found a way to win with things not going our way and so many different variables.”