You sometimes have to wonder what Mike Carey could do at the poker table holding a hand with some face cards. That's because he usually is never holding as many good cards as the other teams he's trying to beat on a nightly basis in the Big 12 Conference.
 
It's basically been that way for most of the time he's been at West Virginia University, going all the way back to his first year in 2002 playing a Big East schedule with a cupboard that was not just bare, but completely empty.
 
Since then, it seems like he begins every year with two sheets of paper - one the scouting report and the other the medical report. Sam Young is the team's athletic trainer, and Carey has taken to calling the players she sees "Sam's Club."
 
Four of them have VIP memberships this year.
 
"I'd like to go one year with the whole team to see what we can do," Carey recently said, shaking his head.
 
For sure, considering what he's done with what he's had has been pretty darn impressive - 11 20-win seasons, 10 NCAA Tournament appearances and a pair of Big 12 championships (one regular season and one tournament) so far.
 
He's won without having enough players to scrimmage; he's won without size; he's won without a lot of athletes and he's won by taking things away from other teams.
 
He's also won without many of his key players through the years, which is exactly what he's facing to begin this season.
 
Heading into his 16^th campaign at WVU, Carey is going to be sitting at the table without his ace in the hole, junior guard Tynice Martin, who is still recuperating from a foot injury sustained out in Colorado Springs, Colorado, this summer participating at the USA Basketball national team tryouts.
 
It happened during a team scrimmage when she made a drive to the basket.
 
"It was kind of a freak accident," Martin said. "I felt it and I knew something was wrong."
 
The injury left Martin in a boot for the remainder of the summer and a good portion of preseason training. She is just now beginning to put weight on it, which puts behind one of the top returning players in women's college basketball.
 
Martin's terrific play down the stretch single-handedly moved West Virginia from NCAA Tournament bubble status before the Big 12 tournament to being an automatic qualifier three days later. She scored a Big 12 championship game-record 32 points in WVU's stunning upset victory over second-ranked Baylor.
 
How soon Martin can get back to that level is the No. 1 topic of conversation in Carey's Club.
 
"I won't be in (top) shape until I get back out on the court, play in games and get back into a rhythm," Martin said last week.
 
"It's tough," Carey added. "Where do you find all of your points right now? You were counting on 20 points from her every game, so now you have to find those points."
 
He will. He always has.
 


Some of those points will likely come from athletic junior college transfer Naomi Davenport, a Cincinnati resident by way of Trinity Valley Community College in Athens, Texas, where she twice earned junior college All-America honors.
 
The word is Davenport possesses Bria Holmes size for the guard position but perhaps not quite Martin's explosiveness with the basketball in her hands.
 
"In practice so far she's been good," teammate Kristina King said of Davenport. "She's been scoring. She's been aggressive and she's getting it as far as the new people coming in. It's been easier for her."
 
Now, just think how much easier those winter nights are going to be for Carey watching the basketball fall through the hoop when he can have Davenport and Martin out on the floor at the same time.
 
He's just not sure when that's going to happen. Martin is hopeful for an early December return but that seems to be a little bit optimistic considering where she's at right now physically.
 
The veteran coach made it clear that he's not going to do anything to jeopardize her bright future, at WVU and beyond.
 
"It's up to the doctors," he said. "We are not going to put her out on the floor too early. I won't do that because she's got a great career ahead of her, even past college in my opinion. She will be fighting me."
 
In a way, she already is.
 
Martin said she has taken up boxing to try and keep in shape until she can get back out on the court with her teammates. Each day she hits a dummy held by student manager Cody McClung to remain active and take a little bit of the edge off of things.
 
"I've been letting a lot of anger out that way because I can't do anything else," Martin said. "I have boxing gloves on and I pretty much hit it every day."
 
"She probably does need to hit something because she's so frustrated," Carey said. "I don't blame her."
 
The first time she hit it, McClung thought she had boxed before.
 
"I can be (Mike) Tyson," she joked. "I never knew I had the technique, but it was pretty much anger built up inside of me - hooks, jabs, you name it, I've got everything."
 
With a healthy Martin and the new players Carey has recruited, it appeared he had everything he needed to transfer Bob Huggins' "Press Virginia" style to the women's team. Carey has said repeatedly for years that he wants to extend his aggressive half-court defense the entire length of the court once he had the right players.
 
But with four of them out now, and a fifth sitting out, he's limited with what he can do.
 
"How can you extend when five players aren't playing?" he asked. "Right now we can't even practice it because we don't have the numbers."
 
But eventually he will, and he will also be getting another rim protector to replace graduated Lanay Montgomery when 6-foot-6-inch Ohio State transfer Theresa Ekhelar becomes eligible at the beginning of the second semester.
 
By then, Martin could be ready to go as well as possibly Anja Martin, Nia Staples and perhaps even Krystaline McCune, a second-year player who has yet to play after suffering a knee injury in high school.
 
Carey knows things will eventually look a lot different when he gets all of these players back out on the court.
 
That's certainly encouraging.
 
"I'm sure during the games it's going to be encouraging as I sit there and watch some of this," he joked. "In practice, our defense is not that easy and the young players - as all young players do - struggle. And now these young players are going to get thrown into the fire and it's going to be frustrating, not only for me and the coaching staff, but for the veteran players because it's going to be a learning process."
 
Then he quickly added, "But they'll get it."
 
They will get it. They always do with Mike Carey coaching them.
 
In the meantime, he just might have to spend a little time with Tynice and Cody in the Fight Club.
 
"I might be boxing by January," Carey laughed. "You might see us both boxing!"