By Bob Hertzel
MORGANTOWN — If West Virginia’s women’s basketball team takes its final exams this week as skillfully as it played the second half of Saturday afternoon’s 74-43 victory over Longwood, Coach Mike Carey will be holding tryouts next week when play resumes because Natalie Burton will be the only player eligible.
A philosopher as deep as Plato himself could not possibly explain how a team can score 44 points in the first half of a game, then come out for the second half and go 9 minutes and 32 seconds not only without a field goal but with just two free throws.
Carey certainly is no philosopher and other than admitting that he was pleased with the first half performance, he was completely at a loss for words.
In truth, if the 6-5 Burton had not come off the bench to score 10 second half points on 5 of 6 shooting, there’s no telling what kind of records for futility WVU might have hung up after intermission.
“I didn’t think we were ever going to score,” Carey would say. “I thought we might just set a Coliseum record with two points in the second half.”
Not that the game was ever in jeopardy, only Carey’s sanity and his players’ safety, for he at times seemed on the verge of losing control.
“It wasn’t like we changed our offense. It wasn’t like they changed their defense. I didn’t go out and get a new team,” Carey said.
It was just that every shot missed for nine and a half minutes and every pass was an adventure, every trip up and down the court like the first the Mountaineers had ever made. Longwood had gone to a little bit of a zone press, but let’s just say it wasn’t anything like the Mountaineers may see in Big East play but to them it looked the Great Wall of China.
Consider one player for a moment. Liz Repella had been in a shooting slump from 3-point range but came in the first half and seemed to have everything corrected. By halftime she was cruising along with 17 points, had hit 3 of 5 3s, and had grabbed eight rebounds.
Whoever came out in her uniform in the second half certainly looked like her, except that nothing went right.
The second half player had one 3-point basket in four attempts for three points and did not grab a rebound.
“Don’t tell Coach Carey that,” she joked to the media when questioned about it in the postgame.
Believe it … he knew.
Part of the problem certainly could be that things came so easily to the Mountaineers early, just as they have since playing Ohio State. Let’s just say the competition, if it were a medicine, would not get FDA approval.
But when the Mountaineers come back from their week-long siesta against Fresno State and Santa Clara, a couple of teams that might give them a challenge as they get ready for the conference opener at St. John’s on Jan. 2.
“I think I speak for the whole team when I say we like challenges,” Repella said. “That’s why we came here. Fresno and Santa Clara will get us ready for the Big East.”
“I’m glad we’ll be playing teams that we can’t use as an excuse that we lost concentration,” Carey said.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
