Lady Cagers in the Game

By Delano Farley
The women’s basketball team at WVU started the season with high expectations. With a group of talented athletes and returning star player Meg Bulger leading the way, the Lady Mountaineers and head coach Mike Carey expected nothing less than building on the success they had displayed in the past two seasons, back-to-back 20-win seasons, an NIT championship appearance in 2005, and an NCAA berth in 2004. The only question that remained was if they could do it.

The Lady Mountaineers got off to a good start, compiling a record of 10 wins and 4 losses in their first 14 games, losing by 3 points or less three times in that span. But the women drifted backwards in the second half of their season schedule, losing Meg Bulger for the season due to injury and 11 of their last 13 games including the final eight. Despite the shortcomings of the season’s second half of play by the Lady Mountaineers, they did manage to gain the final seeding for the women’s Big East Conference tournament. Moreover, that is where the unseen benefit lies in the Lady Mountaineers 2006 season.

Scheduled in the lowest position of the tournament bracket due to only four conference wins versus 12 losses, the Lady Mountaineers were forced to play the best teams in the league. Having lost their last eight games in a row with a compiled record of 12 wins - 15 losses overall, it gave the WVU women one last chance to make something good come out of a horrendous season that once displayed promise.

The Mountaineer women had set big goals in place at the season’s start. But apparently they waited until the last moment to execute their plan of attack, as they marched through the conference tourneys best of the best to get into the Big East championship title game. Surprisingly, they did it using talented but less experienced players from the bench.

The Lady Mountaineers may not have their third straight 20-win season, but they have shown promise with their upset victories inside the conference tournament, and they became the first number-12 seed to advance to the finals in the leagues 23-year history. The younger players have stepped up and shown they are not only talented, but also perfectly capable of helping build the women’s basketball program at WVU into an NCAA championship contender.