After four years as a Division I volleyball student-athlete, Logan Carger had every reason to step away from college athletics.
On the court, she'd accomplished everything and then some. The Houston native had put in the work needed to help lead the Govs to back-to-back Ohio Valley Conference regular season titles, a 2017 OVC Tournament championship and subsequent NCAA appearance and capped her career with an All-OVC first-team spot as a senior.
But she wasn't quite finished. The competitive fire still burned as hot as it did when she stepped on campus. Two things about Carger: she loves to compete and she loves being on a team. Just because the volleyball campaign had ended didn't mean her competitive thirst had been quenched.
"I was a multi-sport athlete in high school but I had to make a decision for college and volleyball came more naturally to me," she said. "I always joked around with Coach (Taylor Mott) how I was going to play basketball my senior year, because it was something I always wanted to do.
"Once volleyball season ended I had this feeling of, 'Okay what now?'"
Carger has the uncanny ability to be able to put people at ease, which helps ingratiate her to most anyone she meets. She's also selfless to a fault, which is how she found herself convincing Austin Peay head coach David Midlick to let her practice with the Governors' women's basketball team. No promise of playing time; no thought, really, of suiting up. Just the chance to compete.
"I talked to Coach Mid about just helping out at practice because they were losing a lot of bodies due to injury," Carger said. "The week of the UT Martin game is when he called me and said I'd start on Monday. That same weekend, Myah (Leflore) got hurt and that ramped up the intensity."
Carger had no expectations; just being able to help out was icing on the cake of an Austin Peay career which had already given her plenty of moments of athletic excellence. In an era so defined by the thought of, "Well, what's in it for me?" Carger just wanted to help. That alone is pretty rare.
Leflore—Carger's roommate and the emotional center of the women's basketball program—going down could've been a death knell for the team. But Carger has helped inject a new swagger into the lineup, thanks to her experience winning titles with the volleyball program.
"I don't think people expected me to say or do much but as the weeks have gone by, I think they feel more confident in me to say something to pick them up or say something to motivate a teammate," Carger said. "That's what we were trained to do in volleyball, and it's the same in basketball—it's a mindset. We can beat any team in this conference, and we need a swag. That's how you have to think in order to exhibit that, that you're the best on the court and if everybody's their best, there's no way we can lose."
It's not just a mindset that Carger has brought to the lineup, although it's tough to doubt that has been her most significant contribution to date. For someone whose most competitive hoops experience prior to January involved impromptu postgame shootaround sessions after home game's the last few seasons, Carger has re-acclimated to basketball at an alarming rate. The numbers may not be eye-popping, but for someone who wasn't seriously thinking about basketball until basketball more or less selected her, getting on the court and contributing in any capacity is a minor miracle.
She concedes there is still work to do on the court—"The mechanics sometimes still aren't there but week-by-week I feel more comfortable," she said—an hysterical notion if you stop to consider that Saturday night she'll play her last home game in the Dunn Center (I know that was said in November, but I'm pretty sure it's true this time around). This whole thing will be over almost before it got started, this science experiment blending athleticism, swagger, leadership and bravado together and infusing it into a team searching for its first Ohio Valley Conference Tournament win since 2012.
But also… why couldn't this team, with a brand-new locker room voice who knows what it takes to win championships, suddenly pick off a team or two and make a run in the tournament?
"I really came to have a winning mindset and spread that to everyone else," Carger said. "The skill level is not what they lack. I want to win. I like to win. There's a lot of potential for the basketball team to win. I like the team atmosphere and I like being around a bunch of people who want the same thing I want, which is to win."
