Surprise Package Wrapped in No. 30

Despite no offseason workouts, Carrem Gay provides a lift to Duke lineup

By John Roth

After playing less than nine minutes a game as a freshman and spending the offseason trying to recover from shoulder surgery, Carrem Gay was hardly projected to begin her sophomore season as the starting forward for the fifth-ranked Duke women's basketball team.

But when 6-5 junior Chante Black suffered a knee injury at the beginning of preseason training camp, Gay found herself in the Blue Devil frontcourt alongside senior Alison Bales, and there she has stayed through the first month of the season, with her 10.5 scoring average, 6.0 rebounding mark and team-best 70.6 shooting percentage.
Surprise, surprise.

“It's something that's always been in the back of my mind. I like to surprise people,” notes the mild-mannered 6-foot-2 New Yorker, who says the best word to describe herself is blessed. “So I have to keep working toward that goal and going hard every game.”

Gay has been surprising people from the very beginning, hence her unique first name (pronounced ka-RIM). Her parents, Carrel and Michelle, were expecting a baby boy and planned to name him Carrel Jr., after dad. When they were blessed with a girl instead, they changed the last letter to make it more feminine. Carrem says she's never encountered anyone else with the same name.

Keen observers of girls high school basketball, however, should not be shocked to see the Gay name making an early impression at the collegiate level. She played for Christ The King in Queens, perhaps the best prep program in the country over the last few seasons. During Gay's senior year, Christ The King went undefeated at 27-0 and finished the year ranked No. 1 nationally by USA Today, while Carrem and junior teammate Tina Charles (now at UConn) both made the All-USA Team.

Last year, with Gay at Duke and Charles a senior, Christ The King again went undefeated at 30-0 and repeated its mythical national high school championship, while coach Bob Mackey picked up his second straight national coach of the year honor.
Interestingly, Christ The King beat the same rival, fellow national power Murry Bergtraum of Manhattan, in the state championship game to close each of the last two seasons. The top player for Murry Bergtraum both those years was Epiphanny Prince, the girl who had a well-chronicled 113-point game to break a record set by Cheryl Miller, and who this year stars as a freshman for Rutgers, Duke's opponent in this week's Jimmy V Women's Basketball Classic.

So Gay came from sturdy roots and had been tested against high-caliber competition before joining the Blue Devils. Coach Gail Goestenkors had high expectations for her, even before she knew that Gay would have the chance to start.

“I told Carrem after last season that I thought she could be the most improved player in the ACC,” Goestenkors says. “I believed that because I saw signs of greatness from her in practice. Toward the end of the year she wasn't getting into games, but you could see that she's got something special.”

“I consider myself a role player so I will do whatever it takes for our team to do well,” says Gay. “If I need to rebound, I'm going to be there. If I need to make an extra pass I'm going to do that.

“At first I was extremely nervous, especially with that first collegiate start. But right now I'm excited to be out there and be one of the people that sets the tempo of the game.”

Gay's athleticism and versatility seem to be making the biggest impact on the defensive end, because she can complement the shot-blocking presence of Bales in the middle.

“She's been really important,” Goestenkors explains. “She's the post player who can go out and defend some of the other post players who can shoot the three. When we had Chante and Ali in there, it was difficult for those two to go out and defend three-point shooters, so Carrem gives us a little different look. And she runs the floor well. Of course she doesn't have the same size as Chante, but Chante's injury has really helped her get the minutes she needed to gain the confidence that she now has.”

And with Black still out indefinitely tending to her knee, Gay's steadiness becomes more important with each passing game as the ACC season approaches ? although all concerned would also like to see Black back on the floor as soon as possible.

“It was a little rough in the beginning, the first few games, but I'm learning to play a little more confident and trust my teammates and know that my teammates will trust me on the court,” Gay notes.

Gay is getting to the point where she can trust her own body again, after over a year of shoulder difficulties that she brought with her from high school and aggravated last year, before having surgery the week after the Final Four. While rehabbing, she was unable to play ball all summer, and even worse, could not lift weights to add some of the strength she needs against bigger and more experienced posts. So there's another reason to view her fast start with a touch of surprise.

“She was probably three months behind everyone else, because she missed the entire summer,” Goestenkors says. “She didn't get to do much until we started practice. She missed the preseason pickup games and individual workouts, so she was behind. But now she's catching up and surging ahead.”

Gay's earliest influence in basketball was her older sister Mica, who played at Methodist College, is now a physical therapist in Fayetteville and attends all the Duke home games. Her parents don't make it to Cameron very often due to Carrel's job in the mass transit industry in New York, but they've also been very influential. Unlike many high school stars, Gay took pride in her defense at that level primarily because her father taught her to take pride in everything she does.

“He's a proud papa who wants me to do well in whatever I do, whether it's basketball or school, and he continues to push me and makes sure I get off my behind when I'm home,” she smiles.

“He grew up in the West Indies where they didn't play much basketball, but he thinks he knows a little something so he tries to teach me whatever he knows. He enjoys watching the games and he'll point out things when we're watching NBA games.”

Gay especially enjoys watching the play of Tim Duncan of the San Antonio Spurs because he is such a fundamentally sound post player. It's not much of a stretch to say that her own fundamentals have helped spur Duke to a fast start.

“Early on she was just coming back from surgery and getting a feel for things,” Goestenkors says, “but as time goes on I can see her confidence growing and she's just going to keep getting better and better. I'm so happy for her and proud of her right now. She's giving us a big lift.”