MORGANTOWN — As the crowd surged onto the court at the Coliseum on Jan. 18 to celebrate WVU’s upset of No. 2-ranked Iowa State, to raise its record to 13-4, already owning victories at No. 7 Kansas, where it had never won, and over No. 3 Gonzaga, and was about to become No. 23 in the nation, who would have guessed we’d be where we are today?

Yet here we are, at home in Morgantown, on the outside looking in at the NCAA Tournament while Iowa State, Gonzaga and Kansas are cavorting on our television screens as part of March Madness.

What we were imagining as a great future has decayed into a fog-shrouded future as we sit here without a coach, with another roster about to turnover, with press conferences taking place about what went wrong and how it could be corrected in today’s world of college sports.

Thoughts like this creep into our mind whenever we have an idle moment, which is far too often these days.

I know what I’m thinking and wonder what you are thinking?

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I’m thinking about how I never would have dreamed that football coach Rich Rodriguez would be considered the person who had to save the athletic reputation of WVU sports after 17 years in exile while Bob Huggins would be a low-level candidate for that opening coaching job, if he is a candidate at all.

I wonder why he would be forgiven while Huggins has not and which, if either, is right or wrong.

West Virginia needs a hero now. It has to be quick. It has to be in football and basketball.

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We thought we had that hero in Darian DeVries. While the locals never really warmed to Neal Brown in football, DeVries seemed to be a likable enough sort who was capable of rebuilding not only the program’s performance but its image.

One year later, he was gone, his exit as much out the back door as was Rodriguez’s back in the day, maybe even more so since he was viewed as a victim with the NCAA’s snub of his team than was Rodriguez, who had just suffered the most insufferable loss in WVU history.

DeVries barely said “goodbye”, let alone “thank you” for rescuing him from a lifetime of lower-level basketball success; for giving him both a chance and as much the assets with which he could create a 19-win team from out of nowhere in his first season.

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I’m thinking about DeVries calling the opportunity to go to Indiana his “dream job”, as if a season at WVU was a very strange type of nightmare.

The decision to leave led to all sorts of conspiracy theories spinning across the internet, whispering that the injury to his son, Tucker’s, shoulder was nothing but a ruse to keep his eligibility not for WVU but for Indiana, which already was in contact with him.

I’ve never been one for conspiracy theories in life, love, politics or sports, and certainly I am not buying into this one, but it screams out for openness in reporting injuries in college sports — saying he suffered an upper or lower body injury just isn’t enough.

Money has so permeated our sports that the curtains must raised and all doubt erased in every area, be it injuries or, as WVU learned, the tournament selection process that somehow put the North Carolina athletic director, Bubba Cunningham, in charge of the NCAA selection committee when he had a healthy bonus clause in his school making the tournament field.

That it was chosen over WVU was a public relations nightmare, to say nothing of being an insult to WVU and its accomplishments during a season that merited recognition, not rejection.

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I’m thinking this is a make or break hire for Wren Baker.

He can’t hire a “one-year wonder”, but instead a West Virginia lifer. He himself says the hire is about “fit”, finding a person who fits so well that he becomes one of us, a person who is not so much a job-seeker but instead a life-seeker.

The No. 1 asset has to be an ability to coach, but the No. 2 asset must be someone looking for more than a job.

He must be seeking a home, a place to raise his family, someone who can withstand the weight of carrying a state and its people on his back.

There is a deep pool to draw from being a Big 12 team steeped in the tradition of Jerry West and Rod Hundley and Da’Sean Butler and Bob Huggins. It is a team that has opened inroads into the NBA that includes players, coaches and executives.

I’m thinking it isn’t my hire and therefore I am not about to conduct my own search, but Baker seems thoroughly capable of uncovering the proper person. His track record in other hires is strong and the success everywhere but in football and men’s basketball is approaching spectacular.

The women’s team plays in the NCAA Tournament this Saturday and would surprise no one with a Sweet 16 run under Mark Kellogg. The track team gave WVU two NCAA championship performances from the distance relay team and distance runner Ceili McCabe.

The men’s soccer team reached No. 1 in the nation for the first time ever last year and is considered a contender to win it all this season.

And the baseball team, which reached new heights under Randy Mazey and became an oft-traveled route to the professional game and the major leagues, is under new coach Steve Sabins and off to a 18-1 start on the season and spot in the nation’s Top 25.

There’s no reason WVU cannot do the same in football and basketball, but for that to last in the ever-changing world of college sports, Rodriguez and the new basketball coach must produce.

There is no room for a mistake on this hire.