Carter Helps Women's Team to a Perfect Beginning
By Phil Caskey
Michelle Carter has been a cheerleader all her life. Whether it is on a high school sideline in Arkansas or on the West Virginia team bus prior to a game, Carter is the one putting smiles on her teammates' faces.
The
Little Rock, Arkansas, native played at Arkansas-Fort Smith junior
college where a "me-first attitude" was ever-present.
But Carter is the consummate team player and has taken a leadership
role on this year's Mountaineer squad with a bright smile on
her face.
"The biggest difference between junior college and Division I is that everybody wants to be on one accord here," the 6-2 forward says. "There's not just one person out there that wants to win like in junior college. Here everyone wants to win. It's a team effort in our case."
And it was the chance to be a part of that team concept that brought Carter from the warm flatlands of Arkansas to the rugged hills of West Virginia.
"When I came on my visit, it felt like I was at home," she says. "Morgantown is so far away from Little Rock, but still I got that home kind of feeling and that I was welcome. I felt I could adjust here."
While at Arkansas-Fort Smith, Carter averaged 21 points and 12 rebounds a game last season. A bi-state all-conference and region II first team performer, Carter helped her junior college team to an 18-10 record. Because of those efforts, she was ranked as the nation's fifth-best power forward and the 16th-best overall junior college player, something that quickly caught the eye of Coach Mike Carey and his basketball staff.
Not only has she fit in, but she's immediately helped the Mountaineers to the best start in school history.
Heading into the Big East conference play, Carter was third on the team with an 11.9 points per game average and ranked sixth in the Big East with 7.8 rebounds per game.
More important than her solid numbers is the fact that she helped West Virginia to a perfect 10-0 start.
Carter started playing basketball in ninth grade at Parkview High after playing volleyball and being a member of the school's cheerleading squad.
"I was cheering at both men's and women's games," she says. "It just took off from there. I said I could play basketball and one day I went out there and just did it."
And in doing that, ever since that day when she first picked up a basketball, she has continually cheered on.
Freshmen Leading the Pack
By John Antonik
Last year, West Virginia basketball was
breaking in a freshman class considered one of the best in school
history.
Among WVU's three highly rated freshmen was one named MVP of
a national AAU tournament, another considered one of the best
75 players in the country, and yet another who ranked among the
nation's top 200 players.
It was supposed to have been the rebirth of Mountaineer basketball.
Instead they helped end a great coaching era.
This season West Virginia is once again relying on a large number
of freshmen. However, this group didn't come in with the same
fanfare as last year's.
One played in the West Virginia north-south all-star game and
another was his high school's team MVP and didn't even average
double figures. A third traveled across the ocean for a chance
to play college basketball in America, while a fourth came to
WVU as an invited walk-on to play for his father.
No, you won't find five stars next to the names of Kevin Pittsnogle,
Jarmon Durisseau-Collins, Joe Herber, and Patrick Beilein in
the recruiting reports, but what you will find is a group of
players determined to play hard and win basketball games.
As of early January, Pittsnogle was averaging a surprising 11.7
points per game and led the team with 18 three-point field goals.
Herber scored a season-high 16 points in West Virginia's come-from-behind
win over Gardner-Webb. Beilein is averaging 4.8 points per game
off the bench and has made 12 of 30 three-point field goal attempts
for a solid 40 percent shooting percentage. Durisseau-Collins'
29-to-7 assist- to-turnover ratio ranks him among the best in
the conference.
Early in the season, this group helped West Virginia match its
win total of last year, and the prospects of making the Big East
tournament this year have dramatically improved.
A Season to Celebrate
By John Antonik
The October 5th Maryland game was the turning
point of the 2002 West Virginia University football season. And
what a season it turned out to be!
Before the crowd at Mountaineer Field could get settled into
their seats, the Terrapins were already winning 28-0 and any
chance of a West Virginia victory was all but eliminated. "We
had that 'deer-in-the-headlights' look in our eyes," said
West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez.
Instead of faltering like it did
a year ago when it lost eight of 11 games, West Virginia rededicated
itself to playing winning football. And because of that, the
2002 Mountaineers turned in one of the more enjoyable and exciting
seasons in recent memory.
West Virginia's reclamation effort got started in earnest at
Rutgers—a team WVU demolished by 73 points a year ago, making
it eager for redemption. Senior Avon Cobourne became the seventh
back in NCAA history to rush for more than 100 yards against
the same team all four times for his career. He finished the
year with ten 100-yard games and is one of just ten players in
NCAA history to have rushed for more than 5,000 career yards.
Cobourne may have been the anchor to West Virginia's offense,
but the unit was also getting a lift from two budding stars in
sophomore quarterback Rasheed Marshall and junior running back
Quincy Wilson.
That was evident against Syracuse, which followed WVU's win at
Rutgers.
Marshall ran for two touchdowns and passed for another and Wilson
added 99 yards and a score to lead West Virginia to a 34-7 victory.
A moral victory at home against Miami preceded West Virginia's
Big East stretch run. The key four-game stretch began at Temple.
WVU cruised to a 46-20 victory over the Owls and went on to put
down Boston College 24-14.
The snowball that was becoming the West Virginia Mountaineers
rolled into Blacksburg, Virginia, for a key Big East contest
on November 20. Playing before a nationally televised audience
on ESPN2, West Virginia used the same formula that helped it
win three in a row: run the football, play tough defense, and
create turnovers.
It was a tight game,
but WVU held its ground and produced one of the most memorable
goal line stands in school history.
West Virginia's 21-18 victory over Virginia Tech snapped a four-game
Hokie winning streak over the Mountaineers and was the first
WVU victory over a nationally ranked team since 1998.
The win propelled West Virginia into the national rankings for
the first time since 1998 and set up a season-ending showdown
with Pitt for second place in the conference standings.
A Heinz Field record crowd of 66,731 and an ABC regionally televised
audience were anticipating a classic eastern football game. The
two teams complied.
West Virginia fell behind early but didn't panic and stayed with
its game plan of running the football. The result was a memorable
24-17 triumph.
"It was a hard-fought, physical football game," said
Rodriguez.
"There were a lot of close ball games that we've been able
to get this year that I think you have to have," said Rodriguez.
"You have to win some close games to get a nine-win season."
Perhaps the most telling statistic of the 2002 season was West
Virginia's plus-19 turnover margin that ranked among the NCAA's
best. "We've run a low-risk offense and we've been opportunistic
on defense," said Rodriguez.
The Mountaineers also managed to avoid the major knockout injuries
that plagued Rodriguez's first season. That turned 3-8 into 9-4
and helped WVU go to a bowl for the first time since 2000.
Even though West Virginia fell to Virginia in the 2002 Continental
Tire Bowl, the progress made during Coach Rich Rodriguez's second
season was remarkable and has excited Mountaineer fans anxious
for more in 2003.