Jim Justiceֱs financial troubles continue. Everything points to him being a person who is in over his head by being a governor, running a vari…
From
To
Darian DeVries has only been the West Virginia menֱs basketball coach for four months.
If people from every school where Ron Reed coached basketball show up at his service, the funeral home might not be large enough.
After seven years of leading the Marshall University athletic program, Bob Marcum left an impression on those who worked for him.
West Virginia and the basketball world said goodbye to one of the greatest players the game has ever seen on Wednesday.
WAYNE ֱ Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy starred in the 1983 comedy classic ֱTrading Places,ֱ but Wayne High School basketballֱs version might sta…
HUNTINGTON ֱ Local artists performed while sharing stories at Marshallֱs fourth annual TEDxMarshallU event Saturday, covering race, religion, …
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (WV News) ֱ Mike Carey's been sick, battling a cold "and stuff", as he put it, for two months.
"I've tried everything," the 4-1 West Virgnia women's basketball coach said Tuesday before heading to practice to prepare for Wednesday night's Big 12-SEC Challenge road meeting with Kentucky, also 4-1. "I've been on three different things ֱ even steroids."
Maybe the problem that was bothering him was that it wasn't his players taking the steroids because they played "soft" in the St. Petersburg (Florida) Classic final, losing by a point to a good BYU team.
This was a game WVU let get away, a championship it should have won but wouldn't do what was necessary to reach out and grab it, and that more than the cold was making Carey sick.
"If we'd quit making mistakes I wouldn't have to yell and I'd probably get better," Carey said.
The problems he faced were three-fold.
"I'll tell you what, Esmery Martinez was sick most of the time; Kari Niblack was in foul trouble most of the time. I was surprised our last game we weren't more aggressive. They were like trapping us in the post and weren't aggressively getting out of it.
"And I was surprised our guards turned the ball over so many times. If we would have not have turned the ball over so much, we'd have been in great shape."
Can't argue with that, but if Sue Bird had been one of those guards, he'd have been in great shape, too. But the thing about sports is the team that does the best with what it has on hand usually winds up the winner.
WVU could have won the St. Pete Classic, but ...
"We just weren't aggressive enough, which surprises me. They were doubling inside and hedging on our guards and we weren't aggressive. That was disappointing," Carey said, hoping that this year with experience, depth and size his would be an aggressive, physical team.
This was a game that seemed to favor the Mountaineers, but they didn't take hold of it.
"The double teams were what concerned me. My goodness, we work on that in practice ... just get big, get aggressive. I don't care if you get an offensive foul on that. Do something. Don't let them stand there and crowd your space," Carey said.
"We need to learn from that because we play Kentucky, which will trap you quick.
"We have aggressive players, so I couldn't understand why we turned the ball over against a little bit of trapping. It wasn't like they had size trapping. They got up into you, but it wasn't size. You could see a pass."
Still, Carey believes, his Mountaineers should have brought a trophy home with them.
"The bottom line was we played well enough to win," the veteran coach said. "We just turned the ball over. It's a shame. I hate to lose that way, where you get lackadaisical with the ball. There were times we were just so soft with the ball and just turned it over. That's just not us.
"We should have won the game, but we didn't. There's always going to be one or two along the way that you win that you shouldn't have, so it evens out as the season goes on."
In the end it came down two last-second free throws for Niblack, one made, one missed ... but that was how WVU lost, not why.
"That's why you need early close games. This was the first time we were able to call time out, advance the ball and run one of our last-second plays. That was good to see that we executed it and had an opportunity to win the game," he said.
"I told the players after the game, 'We gave this away, but this is going to make us better.'"
According to Carey, this is the final game of the Big 12-SEC Challenge series and it will not be renewed, not surprisingly considering what has transpired between the conferences.
"This is it. Me, personally, I wanted to renew it," Carey said. "I understand this is over and the SEC is going to play another league now., but it gives you a Power 5 game that's scheduled for you and it is played home and home. I liked it."
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (WV News) ֱ You've heard the Vince Lombardi line from other eras, a line that has come to describe the approach a football or basketball coach must take to be successful.
"Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing," he said after winning one of consecutive Super Bowl championships in the the 1960s.
The problem is, that's really true and that's something West Virginia's men's basketball team has to take out of Tuesday night's opening 60-53 victory over Oakland.
Bob Huggins got the victory and, 100 years from now no one will remember anything else about the game, but the truth is Huggins and his players were not in a celebratory mood for it certainly wasn't what they wanted.
The truth was that Oakland, a team that finished 8-12 last year, lost one of its top players and had two others go into the transfer portal, one of whom wound up at Pitt, WVU's Friday night 8:30 p.m. Coliseum opponent, got something almost as valuable as a victory ֱ respect.
While most of the time we in these parts take our basketball and life lessons through Huggins, but there are times when the opposing coach has as much to offer in terms of insight into the WVU team and this was one of those times.
Greg Campe has been at Oakland for 37 years, third in longevity at one school to Syracuse's Jim Boeheim and Duke's Mike Krzyzewski, so he knows of what he speaks.
Does WVU have troubles as it heads into this season? Listen to this from Kampe.
"We held them to 0.88 points per possession. I donֱt think Iֱve ever coached a team against a Power 5 team on the road or anywhere that held another team to 0.88. It has to be one of the greatest defensive performances that an Oakland team has ever had," he said.
That may speak highly for the Oakland defense, but more than likely it says something about a rudderless WVU team, playing its first game without point guard Miles "Deuce" McBride and using three newcomers to split the point duties
The result was that Sean McNeil was reluctant to shoot, perhaps because he was getting the ball in unfamilar places and Taz Sherman had 18 points but made just 1 of 7 3s, again possibly because the rhythm was off.
And one certainly can question whether the defense was responsible for terrible inside shooting by the Mountaineers, breaking in replacements for Derek Culver and Emmitt Matthews Jr.
"If we had somebody who could score close, then they probably wouldnֱt have been able to stay in he zone as long as they stayed in it," Huggins said. "We just donֱt score the ball close. How many times did you see a guy catch the ball from a foot and airball it? Itֱs not just one guy, itֱs a whole host of guys."
But it was on the backboards where WVU had no excuses, being outrebounded by Oakland, 48-33.
"I think we gained some respect because of what we were doing on the glass.." Kampe said. "I know the respect that was earned. I know what their coaching staff said to me after. Iֱm feeling really good walking away from this basketball game. Iֱm worried about youth and about rim protection. We rebounded and protected the rim pretty well against a Big 12 team."
Huggins had no arguments here.
"We donֱt rebound the ball; we just stand around and watch. That has to get fixed in a hurry," he said, and went after it in Wednesday's practice where he guaranteed they would earn some black and blue marks from block out drills.