By Bob Hertzel
MORGANTOWN — Mike Carey, West Virginia University’s women’s basketball coach, finds himself in a unique position to answer one of sport’s most intriguing questions.
In another life, Carey was one of the best men’s coaches in Division II basketball at Salem, coaching teams that won 20 games annually and that reached as high as the Final Four one level below the top.
He also just saw up-close and personal what may be the best women’s college basketball team of all-time, a Connecticut team that has won 61 consecutive games, each by double figures. It is a team with a pair of All-Americans in Maya Moore and Tina Charles with a strong supporting cast.
They are coached by Geno Auriemma, who took over a troubled program and built it into the Frankenstein of the college game, a monster that savages the countryside, leaving only destruction in its wake.
The question, however, is whether Auriemma’s Connecticut women, so far advanced in the lady’s game, could handle a good men’s Division II team like Carey’s teams at Salem.
Carey, who coached at Salem from 1988 until coming to WVU to take over the women’s job in 2001, replacing Alexis Basil, did not have to think long about his answer.
“No way,” he said.
As good as Connecticut is, it still comes down to comparing apples and oranges, even comparing Division I women to Division II men.
“I had men,” Carey said. “I had Division I players at Division II.”
This is not a sexist discussion, it is simply a matter that men in college basketball are bigger, stronger, faster than women players.
End of discussion.
Are they better?
That depends on what you like.
“It’s a different style,” Carey said. “The men play above the rim, the women below. It’s a lot more physical on the men’s side but that figures because they are so much bigger and stronger.”
Even at Division II you have players that are 6-7, 6-8 and 6-9.
Connecticut cannot contend with that.
The truth is, Carey believes, they probably could play with nothing above a normal high school level of boys. Nationally ranked boys teams, like the one at Huntington that had Patrick Patterson, Bill Walker and O.J. Mayo would have been just like playing a Division I team.
Scoring would be hard for Connecticut women against teams like that, but again that’s not a knock at women or the women’s game.
It is a fact of life.
Carey has learned to like the women’s game. It’s more than a livelihood for him, it’s a challenge.
You have to play defense and you have to run sets. Athletic ability will get you only so far.
But Carey does believe that the women are being shortchanged in their game.
For example, there is no 10-second rule to get the ball across center court and Carey would like to see that rule changed.
“It would speed up the game,” Carey said. “It would help the game greatly.”
He recalled that in the first women’s game he coached in college he looked at the shot clock and the opponent had not crossed midcourt and 12 seconds had already passed.
“Ten seconds,” he yelled at the official, pointing at the clock.
“This is women’s basketball, coach,” answered the official.
The point is a team can stall in the back court, with the whole court open to pass to, and when you press you really don’t have the urgency you have if they not only have to protect the ball but must get it up court.
Then, too, Carey would like to see them move the 3-point line back to where the men’s is, seeing no need for there to be two lines on the basketball court a foot apart, that making little or no difference in the game.”
Women’s basketball also does not have a five-second possession rule, which is in men’s basketball and makes it a faster moving game.
“I really would like to see them make it a quicker game,” he said.
And, if they’d maybe let him use just one or two of those dudes he had at Salem he might even be able to beat UConn.
E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.
