MORGANTOWN —
It was a game Mike Carey could ill afford to lose, yet he lost it, and that wasn’t the biggest loss of the night.
Not even close.
See, while West Virginia University dropped the final-regular season game to Texas on Tuesday evening down in Austin, 58-45, a game Carey thought the Mountaineers needed to win to assure themselves a place in the NCAA Tournament, they lost junior forward Jess Harlee.
To a knee injury.
Yes, another knee injury.
Their third of the season.
And it seems like the 200th of Carey’s career as WVU women’s basketball coach.
The conversation on Tuesday afternoon went something like this:
“You coached Yelena Leuchanka, right?”
“Yeah.”
“She had two, right?”
“Yep.”
“And Meg Bulger, she had two?”
“Right.”
“And this year it was Asya Bussie and Akilah Bethel and now Jess Harlee?”
“Hard to believe.”
“And didn’t Ramika McGee have a knee?”
“Yeah.”
“And Vanessa House?”
“Yep.”
“Jessica Capers had one in 2009, right?”
“She did.”
“LaQuanda Brandon, Kate Glusko.”
“Them, too.”
And there were probably others, to say nothing of Lanay Montgomery, who came to WVU this year with a knee she injured in high school and is rehabbing it this year.
It’s enough to make you wonder how and why it keeps happening here, but if you look into it you find there as many knee surgeries in women’s basketball as there are Tommy John surgeries in major league baseball.
Think of WVU’s knees this year … three injuries on a 14-player team. That’s proportionately like having 20 knee surgeries in a season on a football team.
A survey a number of years back showed there are far more knee injuries in women’s basketball and soccer than there is in men’s basketball and soccer.
Sometimes the timing stinks. Connecticut star Shea Ralph a few years ago saw a knee go out for the third time in her career in the finals of the Big East Tournament, keeping her out of the NCAA Tournament.
That same year Tennessee had been dominating the sport but missed the NCAAs because its star, Tamika Catchings, the national player of the year the season before, tore an anterior cruciate ligament in January.
It’s been estimated that one in 10 female college athletes suffers a major knee injury (usually an ACL tear) every year. That’s about five times more than men and it is startling stuff.
And if they were to just study what has gone on at WVU, the experts might be stunned.
Harlee’s injury came just before halftime with the ball loose on the baseline. Carey was at the end and isn’t sure what happened.
“There’s no doubt she injured the knee. There was a lot of pain,” he said.
Harlee had become as important a player as Carey had on the team, a player who came off the bench and offered shutdown defense and a kind of energy that took the Mountaineers to another level.
“It’s just amazing,” Carey said. “Jess has been playing so well, a lot of energy, a lot of heart. When she got hurt it was like a big letdown for everybody. You could just see the air go out of the players.”
They hadn’t played well in the first half, couldn’t make a shot, but they had a chance … until the injury closed out the evening for them.
Now there’s the Big 12 Tournament and they have to do it without Harlee … and Bussie … and Bethel … and Montgomery.
“We’ll try to regroup again,” Carey said. “We’ve done this a lot of different times.”
Email Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com or follow him on Twitter @bhertzel.
Bob Herzel
HERTZEL COLUMN-WVU’s Carey has felt this pain before
- Bob Herzel
-
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: Jarrod West treasures time with his family
It came along too late to do me any good, but today I want to offer a very warm thank you to Jarrod West, the one-time West Virginia University basketball hero.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: Big 12 baseball tournament is about America
All of a sudden the Big 12’s annual baseball tournament is more about America and the American way than it is about baseball.
And that makes it a wonderful thing. -
Musgrave to pitch WVU’s second game
West Virginia University baseball coach Randy Mazey believes that the change in format of the Big 12 Tournament will benefit his Mountaineers because it allows him to hold conference Pitcher of the Year Harrison Musgrave until the key second game of the tournament.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: Bill Stewart is missed, remembered
It was Monday, the first anniversary of Bill Stewart’s sudden death while playing the 16th hole of a charity golf tournament with West Virginia University’s former athletic director and his former boss, Ed Pastilong.
-
WVU baseball team helps those in tornado’s path
In so many ways it was a day that called for celebration.
Randy Mazey’s West Virginia baseball team, the team that was supposed to finish last in its first Big 12 season, was sitting in third place on what should have been the eve of the conference tournament. -
HERTZEL COLUMN- Catastrophes make you stop and think
The scenes have been gruesome, devastation everywhere, words flowing from the mouths of reporters that are as difficult to comprehend as are the images on the eyes.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN- Major delivers message: ‘Roll with the punches’
On graduation day, four or five or who knows how many years into one’s college days, you expect to put on your cap and gown and listen to words of wisdom from a commencement speaker more along the lines of Henry Kissinger or Bill Clinton, but that is not to say it is only a day for an academic elitist.
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: Irvin’s dreads are gone now he must rebuild reputation
A couple of days back Bruce Irvin sat down in a barber’s chair — stylist’s chair, if you prefer — and made a dramatic and what had to be traumatic move.
He had his dreadlocks removed. -
HERTZEL COLUMN: Flying WV logo draws attention outside country
Sometimes you hit a nerve, as we did a while back when we wrote about the wide reach of West Virginia University’s flying WV logo.
It has meant a lot to a lot of people. -
Seahawks’ Bruce Irvin suspended four games
Bruce Irvin, one of only two West Virginia University defensive linemen ever to be selected in the first round of the NFL draft, will miss the first four games of the 2014 National Football League season because of a failed test for performance-enhancing drugs.
- More Bob Herzel Headlines
-
HERTZEL COLUMN: Jarrod West treasures time with his family
