By Bob Hertzel
MORGANTOWN — West Virginia’s women’s basketball team had just defeated Radford by 36 points, 64-28, but with coach Mike Carey it isn’t always whether you won or lost, but how you played the game.
And, as far as he was concerned, his Mountaineers had not played it very well.
This came as something of a shock to Madina Ali, who admitted she was somewhat perplexed until the team gathered the next day and looked the films of the game.
“After watching the film we could see what he was mad about,” Ali admitted.
With a young, inexperienced team, Carey has found that seeing is believing.
“I tell them I want them to be as miserable watching it as I was,” he said. “You can correct things on the floor, but when you see it you understand. I’m not coaching by what the score is. I want them to get better.”
This was especially true with Ali, who is one of the most talented players on a talented roster, a great leader but one who sat out for almost all of last season with a shoulder injury and got off to a slow start this year.
After the Radford game Carey emphasized that one of his goals was to shake the rust off Ali and get her going because she was so important to the team. Part of it was film work. Part of it was a heart-to-heart with Carey.
“She was so much trying to be a team player that I had to tell her to be a little bit more selfish, to look for herself more. She was trying to make everyone better but herself. I told her if there’s a gap, attack,” Carey said.
And there was a third part of the reclamation of Ali, that was assistant coach George Porcha gathering her and Liz Repella for a sitdown.
“We talked about what we needed to get done [as leaders],” she said.
What it was, it worked for there was dramatic improvement in the team form the Radford game to the 88-32 crushing they put on Maine.
That was a coming out game for Ali, who had struggled early in the year to lift her game to the heights it needed to reach, especially shooting.
“You have to remember, she sat out a year,” Liz Repella said. “It takes a couple of games to get back.”
Against Maine, she was back.
Ali scored a career high 18 points on a career-best shooting of 6-for-7 seven from the field. She also pulled down eight rebounds and had three steals.
“She was all over the place,” Repella said.
“I guess you could say I was rusty,” Ali said. “I know my shots weren’t falling, but I always feel there are other things I can contribute.”
It is that attitude that makes her the leader she is, although it is also that attitude that Carey feels must be tempered for her to reach the scoring level he needs from her.
“We need her to score. This team needs three or four players in double figures every night,” Carey said.
“When she’s shooting well she’s another option on offense for us,” Repella, the team’s high scorer, with a 14.9 average, said. “When you have five players on the floor who can score, they can’t focus on just one player.”
“The time will come later when they try to take one of our options away from us, so Ali and Sarah Miles are going to have to score, too,” Carey said.
The Mountaineers return to the floor tonight to Eastern Kentucky at 7 in the Coliseum. EKU is 4-3, winning its last four games, all in tight battles.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
