MORGANTOWN, W. Va. — Mike Carey suggests that wins and losses won’t be the most important thing when the West Virginia women’s team travels to Italy and Greece to play in three exhibition games beginning Aug. 7.
Still, the words are barely out before he alters them.
“Once the games start, I know I’ll be just as competitive as ever,” he said.
It is a critical season upcoming for the Mountaineers, who are working to get back to the NCAA tournament after two consecutive trips to the NIT.
And while Carey looks at this trip as a chance to hold 10 summer practices and then have the team bond while touring overseas, he also knows that what he sees this month may not be what he has to work with come November.
“I thought we were going to have a lot of new players, but some of them are not ready to play,” Carey said. “We’re going to have low numbers early, but that’s OK. All of the players are still going to come and they’ll still bond, which is the most important thing.”
Senior forward De’Janae Boykin is nursing a minor injury and has practiced sparingly, while junior-college guards Arleighshya McElroy first joined the team Friday and Dekeriya Patterson won’t join the team until midway through the trip.
Redshirt freshman center Rochelle Norris is still working to receive medical clearance from her knee injury suffered last season.
“Because of injuries, I’m not going to play some of the players over there,” Carey said. “To me, it’s about team bonding. We have a bunch of new players. We’re excited to go and play three games. I want to be competitive, but it’s not about winning or losing. It’s about keeping everyone healthy.”
That has been the main issue with the Mountaineers over the past two seasons, with injuries forcing Carey to use a rotation of just six or seven players for Big 12 games.
If everything goes according to plan, WVU will have a rotation of seven guards this season, including former Michigan transfer Kysre Gondrezick, who left the team after five games for personal reasons last season.
Norris and Boykin are expected to become healthy and join sophomore Kari Niblack, as well as junior-college centers Blessing Ejiofor and Jada Wright.
“We’re still waiting for a couple to get healthy, but it could be a big difference from last season once everyone gets ready to go,” said Niblack, the Big 12’s Sixth Man Award winner last season after averaging 9.7 points and 7.0 rebounds.
“I’ll have people playing out of position and have different people playing center,” Carey said. “Who cares? I’ve had to do that the last two years. This will maybe give us a chance to see what happens if maybe we don’t have the numbers. I think we’ll be fine.”
In all, Carey expects to have 13 healthy players on scholarship when next season starts, as well as former University High standout Zoe Murphy as a walk-on.
The NCAA allows women’s teams a maximum of 15 scholarships, but Carey believes trying to reach that number would only create situations where scholarship players would be unhappy with their playing time and transfer.
“Because of the transferring and the (transfer) portal, nobody in the country is going to carry 15 (scholarship) players again,” Carey said. “It’s just not going to happen anymore. You just have to hope you don’t have a lot of injuries. It’s too easy to transfer and get to another school. If you don’t like your playing time, you just leave. If you don’t like something somebody said, you just go.”
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