Kim Mulkey Talks History, Trusting Her Players

LSU is off to their first Final Four since 2008, Mulkey continues changing the program.

Q. Coach Mulkey, Final Four; what does it mean to you in just year two?

KIM MULKEY: You know why they are saying that? They believe that. I'll answer your question in a minute. We have morning devotion. We have devotion every Sunday when we play, and in the SEC we play a lot of Sunday games, so we have two people that do our devotions for us. One is Shaeeta. Shaeeta is our radio person who also used to play basketball at Duke and she was an assistant on the previous staff at LSU. She's remarkable, a woman of faith. Also our president's wife -- Dr. Bill Tate's wife Kim Cash Tate.

Those two women did our devotion this morning, and it was so touching, so good, and that was part of what Kim Tate was telling them. When you do things, you say, God did.

These two kids have some history behind them, and I remember when I took those transfers, a lot of my coaching friends said, man, you got a locker room full of personalities. How are you going to handle that? And I said do you know me very well? Bring them on.

What they need is tough love. What they need is to be held accountable. What they need is a real woman. Boy, have they had a remarkable year.

To answer your question, I just wanted to come back to the state of Louisiana and come home. My mom lives 40 minutes away, my son flew in here in the third quarter, trying to get him here. He finished spring training with the St. Louis Cardinals. Mackenzie, my daughter, has been on my staff for years, played for me. My grandchildren, my son-in-law Clay. That's what it means to me at the age I am now.

But what really makes me smile is not cutting that net down, it's looking around out there at all those LSU people, looking at that team I get to coach experience it for the first time. This is the first time any of them have ever been to a Final Four, unless Lex went during her journey. I can't remember, but none of the others have been. That's what it means to me is to do things that you're not supposed to do as quickly as you're supposed to do them.

But my life is like this, and my coaches will tell you, I want things done yesterday. If what you did today still looks big to you today, then you haven't done much. I want things quick.

It will hit me tonight when we're on that plane going back to Baton Rouge, and I'm sitting with my feet propped up tomorrow eating crawfish and go, I've got to go back again, to go back to the state of Texas. I'm going to see tons of just dear friends in the 21 years at Baylor that I made. I still have a home in Waco. I have a home in Baton Rouge. My grandchildren live in Waco. I guess they said, God did it, right?

Q. Coach, for Alexis Morris to have the game she had tonight, 21 points, and now she gets to end her LSU career in her home state, just what was it like to watch that performance tonight?

KIM MULKEY: Well, she'll tell you it wasn't a good performance. She'll tell you she complained every time-out about too much air in the balls. Isn't that funny? But it all seriousness, we need to check those balls out, because it's not even fun for me to watch them the men play. I mean, knockdown shots is normal for the men, and they're just rattling all over the rim.

It's happening to both teams, so it's not like one team has an advantage. But I know Alexis Morris's ball handling skill and she'd bring the ball up, and all of a sudden you'd see that thing just jump off the floor.

She had to be -- when it got down five minute or less, 12, 14 point game, 13, whatever it was, you look at someone that has had that much experience in college and you tell them, this is where point guards have to lead and control the flow of the game. They're going to press. They're going to take chances and trap you. Take care of the ball.

It makes you more comfortable knowing that you have an older player out there with the ball in her hands.

Q. What would it mean to win a championship in your home state, and what would it mean for the community to have that?

KIM MULKEY: We don't have to win a championship to see how much they love us. I think they're going, what are we doing in year two. Are you kidding me? The greatest thing right now for me is we've got two SEC teams in the Final Four. Write that story. Two. That's 50 percent last time I checked.

The top two finishes, the champion, South Carolina is going. I'm just telling you flat out. I'm getting ahead of myself, okay, but you write it. They're going. That's nothing against who they play. I just know how good they are. I have to play them. I have to see them.

But when we do get two there, you write that story. Because all we heard all year, the SEC coaches, was how down the SEC was. What is down? We had seven make it, four of the seven made it to the Sweet 16. How down is that? Now I'm giving my plug to the SEC right now, but wait and write that story after Dawn wins her next one, okay?

What would it mean for me personally? I just like to win. I didn't go to LSU. I want to Louisiana Tech. In the early '80s, it was the dominant women's program. It broke my parents' heart because they could have driven 40 minutes to see me play, but they had to drive four and a half hours to see me. They knew I just wanted to win.

I had seen from a distance the Seimone Augustus days, the Sylvia Fowles. I had to play against them in the Final Four in 2005 when I was at Baylor. They were so good. And so at this last juncture of my career, I felt the love, I felt the value, I felt the appreciation that if you will just come home, that's a positive in itself. And I did.

I didn't put parameters on the team. I didn't say anything except at the press conferences. I want to put a championship banner up there some day. Now we get to put another Final Four.

South Carolina, I've said it from day one, is an unbelievable team and should win it all. But I'd sure love to be in that championship with them because then y'all could write 100 percent, right? Two SEC teams, right? But we're going to enjoy this.

That's what you play for, to get to Final Fours, to win championships.

Do you know how many coaches -- do a little research. How many coaches coached 25, 30, even 40 years never ever made a Final Four and never won a championship. It's so hard to do.

Q. You've talked about doing it for other people. You talked about wanting to win for yourself. What does it mean personally to you. And when Alexis says you're the plan, and when Angel says I wanted her to push me, to know that they want you being the one to do it?

KIM MULKEY: Well, who knows you better than your family in life? Who knows you better in athletics than your players? They see you at your best every day. They see you at your worst. They see you at your weakest, and vice versa.

I think they can answer it better than me. I think it is a perception out there about me that everybody has that's so not real. But I'm okay with that because these kids that play for me, the coaches that coach for me, my family that knows me, you can't control what people want to perceive about you.

What I love about coaching is I want that kid to think she can't go any further, but man, when she does, she looks at me and goes, my God, thank you for pushing me. I want to look at that kid that everybody says will be an academic casualty or somebody that's really going to struggle academically, and I can watch that kid get a degree and a diploma. Every kid I've coached that finished playing for me has a degree. Do you think they're all 4.0 students?

That's what I will remember when I sit in the rocking chair some day, is that I took teams, players that maybe others didn't want to coach, couldn't coach, and we competed, and we won.

But they have to buy in. They have to say, I love this woman's personalities, man. She laughs with us, she cries with us, but she's tough as nails and doesn't ask us to do anything that she wouldn't do for us.

It's been a great year. I mean, to this point, we've lost two basketball games. That great non-conference schedule I played wasn't so bad after all, was it? Golly.

Q. I'm curious what went into the decision to bring Bob Starkey back to LSU and what he's meant to you and this program this year?

KIM MULKEY: I wish Bob was sitting up here because y'all asked the question about the black dots on the fingers. Bob has coached on the men's side. He coached Shaq and all those guys at LSU back in the day. Then he's on the women's side and he's coached with Sue Gunter, he's coached at Auburn. The list goes on. And I always watched Bob from afar, never knew him personally.

When I had an opening on my staff, my secretary -- they're now called administrative assistants, okay. She's dear friends with him, and I said, do you think Bob would want to come back to Baton Rouge? He had just gotten Auburn. Had only been there a year. She said well, if doesn't, his wife will divorce him.

But he really struggled initially with the offer because he's really a good person and loyal. And he said, I can't do it. I gave Johnnie my word that I would -- and then within 24 hours, he called back. I called Johnnie at Auburn. I don't have to do that, but I said, Johnnie, I'm going to reach out to Bob Starkey and see if I can talk him into coming back.

When I tell you it's such a natural fit, you would think we've been coaching together for a long time. Examples: Some of you asked to interview Bob and he was freaking out. He goes, Coach Mulkey will let me interview? It's like, what are you talking about? It's like, yeah, you interview.

I wanted him to do every scouting report. I didn't want to hear a lot of voices. I wanted him. He's a junkie in the film room, and I wanted him to do every scouting report and then communicate with me.

He just -- we think alike. It's really strange. We think alike. He'll say something and I'll show him my practice thing and go, what does that say right there?

It's been very easy, very comfortable. That man took LSU as an interim coach to a Final Four. People forget that. Interim. He doesn't want to be a head coach. This is his calling.

I sure am blessed, and I am so grateful. He should be sitting up here because this thing on the -- Coach, I have something I really want to do before the game. I said, tell me what. I said, do it. Interrupt me. When we go in there, you interrupt what I'm getting ready to tell them and get them fired up, Bob. And he did.

Q. How crucial was Sa'Myah Smith tonight, and also hearing Angel say that she needed you, what does that mean to you?

KIM MULKEY: Well, Sa'Myah Smith was on the all-freshman team in the SEC, deservingly so. Sa'Myah, I've watched her for along time, de Soto High School there in Texas and was recruiting her when I was at Baylor and then came here and was able to change and get her to leave the state of Texas. She won so many championships in high school. She knows what it feels like to wear rings.

She is the quiet kind, will talk more now than she did when she first got to LSU. She has skills you don't teach. She's a quick jumper. She's tall, lanky, she'll time a blocked shot. What she lacks is just experience, getting pushed, getting shoved. But altering shots, scoring big in there tonight when LaDazhia came out of the game.

But even before tonight, I stopped in our shootaround today. She had two big moments as a freshman in the last game. Had three sitting on the bench and they fouled out. The first big moment in the Utah game, she didn't get but about seven minutes. But these are the moments that help young ones grow. She contested the shot on the last three. She was the one out there contesting. I asked her how close did you think you needed to be because you knew they were going to try to kick their legs out and get the foul? And you talked to her and say, you can't put a dollar value on that moment right there.

The second moment in that Utah game was when she was blocking out on that rebound, and boy, are we lucky because she got shoved and pushed underneath. So we go back, we show her the film and say, you just had two of the biggest moments of the Playoffs of your freshman year and you don't even realize it.

Your second part of your question was -- well, it touches your heart because I know what Angel needed. The public doesn't need to know that. I know what she needed. I know what I said to her on her recruiting visit, and I don't sugar coat it.

I think what helps, they will call former players. Let me make it clear. Do you think every former player I've ever coached loves me? Are you kidding me? They'll bash you in a heartbeat, and they'll usually bash you because you disciplined them or you dismissed them or they didn't get enough playing time. That's the nature of being a head coach.

But I encouraged them, talk to the current players, talk to those kids I inherited at LSU last year. Let them give you the good, the bad and the ugly. We needed Angel. The program needed a quick start with the transfer portal. Same thing with Alexis Morris.

It touches you as a coach because they allow me to coach them, and they know my heart is in the right place.