BY JUSTIN JACKSON The Dominion Post
It was every prep basketball player’s dream.
Time running off the clock in a state tournament situation and the ball in Morgantown High’s Chris Carey’s hands in a tie game.
Carey holds the ball at the top of the key as the clock runs under 10 seconds. He gets a pick from a teammate, goes to his left and hoists a 3-pointer for the win ... and misses.
It would be easy to end the story right there, but there’s a reason Carey was named The Dominion Post’s boys’ basketball Player of the Year.
At different stretches this season, Carey, who will continue his career at Fairmont State, would not let the Mohigans die.
Feb. 10, 2005 — Carey scored 29 points and added 10 rebounds in a 72-66 victory against University High. His 3-point play with under a minute left sealed the outcome.
March 4 — In the sectional tournament, Carey scored a career-high 34 points and added 10 rebounds in a 77-72 victory, against UHS.
March 8 — Carey scored 29 points again, in the Region I final, against Brooke, to advance the Mohigans to the state tournament for the fourth consecutive season. Now they were in the state tournament, one year removed from a stunning first-round upset when the Mohigans were ranked No. 1 in the state, and once again, if there was time left on the clock, Carey somehow made sure the Mohigans kept ticking.
There were roughly four seconds to go after the miss.
“I didn’t know how much time was left, but I followed my shot,” Carey said. “I could see where it was going to hit. Andrew Dunn made a great play by tipping the ball toward me on the rebound and he kept it alive. The ball came to me and I just threw it up there and thankfully it went in.”
The buzzer-beater gave MHS a 62-60 victory, another 20-victory season and a trip to the state’s Final Four. Carey finished the game with 29 points.
“He’s the type of kid that doesn’t have the word ‘quit’ in his vocabulary,” MHS coach Tom Yester said. “He’s a true competitor. He’s a bulldog out there on the court. He’s got the type of mentality as a competitor that you just don’t see a lot any more from high school kids.”
For the season, Carey averaged 19.9 points and five rebounds per game while shooting 54 percent from the field and 38 percent from 3-point range. The Mohigans finished with a 20-6 record after falling to eventual state champ Huntington in the state semifinals.
“You look at the latter part of the season for Chris,” Yester said. “His points kept going up at the most crucial part of the season, but his number of shots per game pretty much stayed the same. It’s not like he was out there taking 20, 25 shots per game. He elevated the team, but also stayed within the system to do it.”
Jason DeProspero The Dominion Post photos