Poor Mike Carey. Coaching one of the best women’s basketball teams in the country and it’s barely a ripple in Morgantown because of the mud slung around the football program — and remember, of course, the women would normally be overshadowed by the men’s program. Carey can’t control the former, but would like to see his university address the latter. So he took to the newspaper this week and made his case, only to see his well-intended plea for more marketing support get completely and unfortunately blanketed by the latest football finger-pointing.

“My biggest frustration is that we go on the road all these places, and we see what other schools are doing to promote women’s basketball,” Carey said. “Our people do very little to promote us.

“I thought and I was hoping that once we got nationally ranked, things would change, but it’s no better, no bigger.

“I just believe with some promotion we could get better crowds and get more interest going.”

Carey said he just wasn’t referring to the crowds that have watched WVU in recent seasons at places like UConn, Tennessee, Notre Dame and LSU.

“A lot of places that don’t have programs as good as ours make it special,” he said. “It’s an event, not just a game. Promotional things a lot of these places for women’s basketball are much, much farther along than we are.”

Yinka Sanni never said it during a conversation earlier this week and far be it from me to put words in her mouth, but I have to think the women’s team is on a mission in tonight’s Capital Classic to not only beat Marshall, but validate itself and all it’s done.

“Sometimes it’s hard for our fans to come to come down from Morgantown to see the game, so it’s like we have a new audience to see us and how we’ve progressed. Each year we’ve done something for Wet Virginia. We want to show everyone we’re proud to be playing for West Virginia and we’re proud of what we’re doing. We helped West Virginia become the team we are now and we want people to be proud of that.”