100 and Counting
January 31, 2007 02:16 PM | General
January 31, 2007
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Mike Carey will be the first person to admit that the wins haven’t come quite as fast as he’s used to, but the sixth-year West Virginia coach did reach a milestone last Saturday afternoon when he won his 100th game at WVU against Georgetown.
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| Coach Mike Carey won his 100th game at West Virginia last Saturday at Georgetown. His WVU record is now 100-74 heading into tonight's game against Syracuse.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks |
For a women’s program that had just one winning season during a nine-year stretch from 1993-2001 going 92-159, the transformation has been nothing short of remarkable. Some coaches at WVU have won more games or taken teams further into post-season play, but none have had to travel a longer distance than what Carey has been asked to do with the West Virginia women’s basketball program.
“If you look at where the program was and where it is now and if you go back and track the injuries of the key players and all that type of stuff … where we’re at now and where we came from with all of the road blocks … we feel very fortunate to be where we’re at right now,” Carey said.
Guard Meg Bulger was the program’s first big-name recruit, earning Parade All-America honors and capturing national attention at Oakland Catholic High School. She was supposed to be the player Carey was building his program around. Unfortunately, two serious knee injuries have forced Bulger to miss the better part of two seasons.
In the meantime, West Virginia nearly upset its way to a Big East tournament championship in 2006. After a brutal early season schedule this year playing at LSU and at Tennessee, the Mountaineers are positioned for an upper-level finish in the conference in 2007.
“If you look at our players they have really improved every year,” Carey said. “That’s been a key. Even though Meg was one of the players we were building the program around, the other players around her developed.”
Carey admits it hasn’t been easy fighting the negative perception some still have of the West Virginia women’s program. But it’s much better now than it was five years ago.
“I don’t think we’re completely over it but I think it is better,” he said. “I think the success football and men’s basketball has had helped us fight that battle. My philosophy is if they can do it we can do it. We try to sell that we have other programs here having great success and we can do it too.”
To his credit, Carey also realized early on that he had to adjust his coaching style after spending most of his career coaching men. The same approach simply wasn’t going to work with women.
“I’m probably not as fiery as I was with the guys but I still have my moments,” he chuckled. “I’ve learned that I can get more out of them – especially this group – by calming things down a little bit.”
When Carey arrived at West Virginia in 2001 there were just a handful of male coaches in the league, Geno Auriemma at Connecticut and Harry Perretta at Villanova being the most notable.
Today half the women's teams in the Big East boast male coaches.
“I felt all along that the coaching in the Big East was always great,” Carey said. “There were no easy nights knowing that the teams you were facing were going to be well prepared. It’s still the same.
“But I think you’re starting to see a little bit more of coaches coming from the men’s side,” he said.
For Carey, coaching women was a big leap of faith. He built an impressive resume at Salem and could have used that to land a higher profile job on the men’s side. But the idea of turning around the West Virginia women’s program intrigued him enough to accept Athletic Director Ed Pastilong’s offer to try something new.
“There were several days when I first got here that I was feeling sorry for myself and thought I was crazy,” Carey laughed. “But when I took over at Salem it was the same situation. They were winning four-five games a year. I had been through that before but not on the women’s side so it was a big adjustment period for me.”
One of Carey’s biggest objectives right now is getting more people into the Coliseum to watch his team play. West Virginia plays an exciting brand of basketball that is fun to watch.
“The people that do come do a great job,” Carey said. “We’re very pleased to have the people that come. If other people would give us a chance and get to know our girls they would really enjoy it because we do have good young ladies. Out of our 14 girls nine had over a 3.0 last semester. They are doing it on the floor and off the floor and I think that is very important.”
Presently West Virginia (14-7, 5-3) is right in the thick of the Big East race. The Mountaineers have won six in a row heading into tonight’s game against Syracuse. West Virginia’s RPI is a very solid 54, and the Mountaineers have five conference games remaining against teams with RPIs in the high 20s and low 30s, according to the web site CollegeRPI.com.
“There are a lot of games left that could go either way and there are a lot of games that are winnable if we continue to play well,” he said. “We’re just getting into it. These last eight-nine games are going to be the key to the success of our season and we’re going to have to continue to play well.”
