Sunday in Dallas wasn't the first time Kim Mulkey got to bask in the glow of the final two minutes of a national title. It was the fourth time, to be specific.
But that didn't stop the Louisiana native from feeling the emotions of what she'd just accomplished for her home state, where she returned just under two years ago to do just that. The cameras caught the Tigers coach overcome with emotion at about 90 seconds on the clock, but with her team having the game well in hand.
With about a minute remaining she embraced freshman Flaujae Johnson on the court, with her coaches yelling for her to get back to the bench. She didn't much care for the instructions.
"I said ‘don’t tell me what to do. I’m fixing to win another championship,’ " Mulkey recalled after the 102-85 victory over 2 seed Iowa.
It was some combination of seeing the former LSU greats like Seimone Augustus in the crowd, her former Baylor players, her former Louisiana Tech players, her family and friends and assistants and most of all, her own players that had helped lead her and the program to somewhere it's never reached in a storied basketball history.
"I don’t know what it was, but I lost it," she said. "And that should tell you how I feel about it. I’m very, very emotional, and tears of joy."
Mulkey also called back to one of the more poignant moments from her introduction at LSU. She had her players stand up and turn around to take in all of the banners in the rafters. She pointed to the many Final Fours, and noted that nowhere up there did it say national champion. She vowed to change that, and that's exactly what she accomplished this week -- though not even she would've dared to believe it'd be happening this quickly.
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"I’m relieved, because I don’t have to think about that anymore. To see, after the ballgame, the former LSU player Seimone Augustus crying, and seeing all those people that really were a part of all those Final Fours but just couldn’t get over the hump," she said. "To walk down the hall and see my former Baylor players that won championships with me, waiting for me. To look in the stands and see my former Louisiana Tech players, it’s emotional. It’s emotional, and I am so happy — I really don’t know how to explain it. Just a deep gratitude and happiness. And yes, it does matter being back home."
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MORE FROM KIM MULKEY
ON DEFENDING CAITLIN CLARK
Iowa's superstar sharpshooter got her now-standard 30 points, but it was a hard 30. In fact, as Mulkey pointed out post-game, only two of those points came inside the three-point arc. She buried 8 of 19 3s for 24 of those points, and hit 4 of 5 free throws. While anything but an easy assignment, the Tigers coach credited Alexis Morris for a lot of that work, with an assist from Last-Tear Poa when the senior had to leave with foul trouble.
"Alexis Morris guarded two of the finest women’s basketball players that our game has. She did it against Georgia Amoore with Virginia Tech and she did it tonight. She didn’t keep them from scoring. They’re that good. But what she did is she made every shot they took a little bit, maybe, more difficult, instead of easy. We knew Caitlin was gonna shoot the ball. We knew she was gonna make her 3s. But we couldn’t give her the 10 to 12 points she always gets off of layups.”
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DO YOU PAY ATTENTION TO THE SOCIAL MEDIA SCUFFLES?
“I like y’all more than I do social media. So if you’re on social media and hiding behind a computer, I don’t like ya. If you want to face me eyeball to eyeball and disagree with me on things, I respect you more. I know nothing about Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. I have accounts. You will see that I have accounts. I don’t touch those. My coaches do it for me. So I can’t help you in any area of what was said. I looked at Alexis and gp ‘what did she say? What is the blowup about?’ And quite frankly, I don’t care. I waste no time on all that stuff. But it’s the world we live in, but guys, I’m too old to worry about all that stuff. Now, if she does something, if we’re doing something that embarrasses the program, my coaches and my administrators usually help me address that.”
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HOW DOES A WIN LIKE THIS HELP YOU BUILD A PROGRAM?
“Well, it doesn’t get any bigger than this. We grew this … last year. And it was kinda scary because I kept trying to tame that monster. I said we may be feeding this monster too early. But the crowds just kept getting bigger and bigger and the student section, guys, is off the charts at LSU. And, we’re national champions in Year 2, and we’re not all seniors. We lose four outstanding seniors, but the core of your group are young and underclass, and you hope they stay. Lord knows every time you turn around you’ve got to deal with people in the transfer portal. But you sign the No. 1 recruiting class in the country, and that was before we won a national championship.
We haven’t even won an SEC Championship. We’re working. And when they come to visit LSU, I can’t describe it to you. People love winners at LSU, fans — off the charts. I can tell you, I don’t want one negative thing written if we don’t win a national championship next year, OK? I’m telling you all in advance, they’re hard to do.”
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