Land Down Under
July 31, 2007 09:29 AM | General
July 31, 2007
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| Mike Carey |
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – At the end of last year, West Virginia coach Mike Carey thought with the team he had coming back this season that a summer trip to Australia might be a good way to begin the year.
The Mountaineers will spend 10 days in Australia playing five games against club teams.
“You’re allowed to make a trip like this every four years and this is my seventh year and we’ve never made this trip,” said Carey. “I felt with this many seniors that we need to reward them a little bit. This is the way to reward them. This is an experience of a lifetime and hopefully they will get a lot out of it.”
Eleven players including Meg Bulger will make the trip, although NCAA rules prohibit incoming freshmen and transfers from participating.
“With the rules now if you go during the summertime before the school year starts then your freshmen can’t go nor can your transfers,” Carey said. “With seven seniors on this basketball team along with some other underclassmen this is a good time to make this trip.”
Bulger has missed parts of the last two seasons with knee injuries. Although she has been cleared to begin non-contact practicing Carey is not going to play the senior guard in Australia.
“Meg is not going to play and I wouldn’t have played her anyway because we’re not going to take a chance there,” Carey said.
The coach says his objective for the trip is to develop team bonding and try a few new things in the games.
“We’re playing five games in 10 days and our last two games will be against real strong competition. We wanted to play some good teams and we wanted to play some teams that were probably not as good,” he said. “We’re going to try and play people evenly and really have some team bonding. With this many seniors we want to get on the same page with everybody and set our goals and have an idea what we want to do when we start in the fall.”
Australia was picked in part because Carey had heard good things from other coaches that have taken teams to Australia.
“Other teams have gone to Australia and really enjoyed it so we decided to go there,” he said.
Carey has been handling all of the practices because his three assistant coaches Chester Nichols, Semeka Randall and Dave Dagostino have been out on the road recruiting.
“You’re allowed to practice 10 days before you go and this is right in the middle of our recruiting month,” Carey said.
The veteran coach knows very little about the teams he’s going to play and he actually prefers it that way.
“When we play scrimmages I don’t want a scouting report. I want our girls to be able to adjust during the game and be able to get used to what a girl does. That’s what we’ll have to do all five games over there,” he said.
The team wraps up practice this week and will make the 22-hour flight to Sydney on Sunday, Aug. 5. The Mountaineers will play games in Sydney, Cairns and Townsville.
“I want to get everyone on a positive note and everyone fired up for the season without injuries,” Carey said.
Briefly:
“If I see that they’re tired I’m going to pull them out and we’ll put fresh people in there,” Carey said.
