WVU Women’s Basketball Coach Mike Carey Gets Win No. 700

The West Virginia University women’s basketball team rolled over Louisiana State 62-42 Saturday evening in Las Vegas for its second win of the season and the 700th in the career of coach Mike Carey.

“First of all, I’m old, that’s why,” Carey said after the game. “So, when you stay in it long enough, you have to win some of them.”

Carey, who has coached the Mountaineers since the 2001-02 season, gave credit for the wins to all the players and assistant coaches he has had throughout the years.

“I’ve had a lot of great players that have played for me, and I’ve had a lot of great assistant coaches, a lot of great administrators,” Carey said. “You don’t win those games by yourself, it takes everybody to win those games. I’m very happy. I’m just really concentrating on the team, and we have to keep moving forward.”

412 of Carey’s wins have come at the helm of WVU. Prior to joining the Mountaineers, Carey won 288 games in 13 seasons as the head coach of the Salem University men’s team.

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The Mountaineers (2-0) outscored LSU (0-2) in every quarter of Saturday’s game, led by 22 points from senior guard Kysre Gondrezick. Junior forward Kari Niblack led the team with 11 rebounds.

“I think it was a great team effort, we did a great job,” Carey said. “If you would’ve told me we’d come down here and beat LSU by 20, they have almost everybody back and were an NCAA team last year. I’m very happy. We have a lot of things that we have to get better at, but man, I like the effort we gave today. I’d like to give credit to Kari. She struggled yesterday and came back today and played extremely hard.”

The Mountaineers won both of their games in the South Point Thanksgiving Shootout over the weekend, also defeating Fresno State (1-1), 83-62, in the season-opener on Friday.

WVU will return to the Coliseum to make its 2020-21 home-opener against North Alabama on Dec. 3. The game will be streamed on Big 12 Now on ESPN+.