LSU women's basketball doesn't exactly enter the NCAA Tournament field on a hot streak, but Kim Mulkey still likes her odds with a pair of star players back to full health.
The Tigers enter the field as a 3 seed after a 28-5 season, but one that saw LSU drop three of its past four games, including one to Texas in the SEC tournament semifinal. The positive? All of those games came with star wing Flau'Jae Johnson out with a shin issue. Aneesah Morrow also aggravated an ankle injury in the loss to Texas, but both will be in the lineup when the Saints host San Diego State at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center on Saturday.
"[Sitting Flau'Jae Johnson] cost us a couple of wins but we weren’t gonna change our standings in conference had we won the games," Mulkey told WWL Radio this week, "so I decided ... I don’t want it to turn into like stress reactions or stress fractures and she’s not playing good because of it and she’s trying to hide it, so let's just shut her down and let’s rehab her and get her ready.”
Hear WWL Radio's full interview with Kim Mulkey in the player above. Can't see the embed? Click here.
While not optimal, the Tigers are in a familiar setting. They were also a 3 seed in the 2023 tournament when they ran the table for LSU's first-ever title.
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More from Kim Mulkey
What are the keys to winning the NCAA Tournament?
“Experience does matter. The inexperienced teams play kind of kamikaze, where you have nothing to lose but usually those teams don’t win championships. The experienced teams handle the ups and downs throughout a game and because they’ve been in that situation before, they don’t get rattled.
Now, to win a championship, certainly you’re gonna have to play defense, but you’re gonna have to all be on the same page at the right time, playing your best basketball. You’ve got to make sure that you get one lucky play. If it’s a missed free throw, if it’s a made 3. Something in the course, along the way in these six games to a national championship, one play you go ‘how did that happen?’ And then lastly, you’ve got to stay away from injuries. Injuries can derail anything you try to do when you have somebody go down that’s in your rotation.”
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What to know about San Diego State
“They came in 4th in their league. They won their conference tournament. Only one from their league got in the NCAA Tournament. They’re gonna spread you out all over the floor. They average about 8 made 3s a game which, they’re not what you say is just a flat-out 3-point shooting team. They — and they just take you off the bounce. They play hard, they’re undersized. We’re gonna be, you know, much bigger than they are, and they’re excited and when you’re excited to be in the tournament, you usually play your best basketball. Their coach was at LSU and was an assistant at LSU for 2 years under Nikki Fargas, so she’s very familiar with the PMAC and the crowd and she’ll have her team ready to play.”
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How have things changed since winning it all with the Tigers
“When I took the job I said at my press conference, I came home to win a national championship and little did I know we would do it as quickly as we have. We’re relevant now. Whether we ever win another one or not, I came home to do what I wanted everyone in this state to experience. I was blessed to have experienced that at Louisiana Tech three times, two as a player and one as an assistant coach and I realized that LSU had never done that, and I thought, oh my gosh, they have some of the best teams in the country and how hard it is and coaches coach a lifetime and never win it and for us to do it, my heart is filled. I will continue to play hard and try to put a product on the floor that the whole state is proud of and not just the LSU moms and daughters. We’re getting responses from people that watched me play at Louisiana Tech and people in the surrounding areas. That’s what you want to build so people will start talking about you.”