Last season, Meg Bulger racked up her share of accolades. She was the Big East Freshman of the Year as the first player off the bench for the West Virginia women’s basketball team. She also earned conference rookie of the week honors six times, one shy of the Big East record. But that was all in the shadow of older sister Kate, who has since graduated.

Meg has now moved into the starting lineup in her sophomore season and will take her league-leading 21 points per game to the court against visiting Syracuse tonight at 7. And to think, she almost let it all go to waste.

‘I actually didn’t care too much about sports when I was younger,’ said Meg, the youngest of five siblings. ‘I did it because it was a way to always be with my brothers and sisters. I did it just because they did.’Her brother Marc ultimately chose football and now stars as a quarterback for the St. Louis Rams after a college career at West Virginia. Her other brother Jimmy played golf at Notre Dame. Another brother, Patrick, perhaps the family’s best athlete, never played college sports. And Kate finished with an illustrious basketball career with the Mountaineers.

‘I was still pretty young when (Kate) was recruited,’ Meg said. ‘Basketball was pretty serious to me but I didn’t understand the recruiting process. Coaches would come to my house and say, ‘We’ll be back in a couple of years’ when they were leaving. I wasn’t really thinking about that. (Later), I became kind of familiar with the area and it was a lot of fun down here.’

Back then, Meg only played in her driveway, where Marc would block her shots and call fouls on her even though she was just out of kindergarten and Kate in fourth grade.

‘They didn’t care,’ Meg said of her brothers. ‘One of us would always go in crying. Mom would have to come up and yell at (my brothers).’

Marc ended up getting punished by 300-pound linemen rather than his mother, while Kate and Meg survived the torment to play one season together for head coach Mike Carey. Meg said she loved the experience with her sister, nicknaming Kate ‘Boss Lady’ after always asking permission to borrow the car or go out.

Now Meg is the last Bulger remaining in Morgantown. The 6-footer leads the conference in scoring and will have to go up against Orange forward Chineze Nwagbo to keep it that way.

‘(Nwagbo) is unbelievable,’ Bulger said. ‘She’s one of the top posts in the conference, if not the country. She’s powerful and graceful with her moves.’

Bulger will also have to contend with two Orange players who didn’t play against her last year, when the Mountaineers won both games against SU. Freshmen Vaida Sipaviciute and Jessica Richter have logged major minutes for head coach Keith Cieplicki and have helped the Orange become more competitive in the conference.

‘I think Jess and Vaida in particular are obviously playing really well and they’ve stepped their games up,’ Cieplicki said. ‘They feel like they are capable of competing with the best teams in this league. And that’s the whole idea, that’s what we came here to do. I feel that way no matter what, but it’s more important for them to feel that way because they’re the ones that have to play. But they’re doing the things they need to do to be successful, and as long as that continues, there’s no reason to think we can’t be.’

Published on January 25, 2005 at 12:00 pm