After coming off a national championship winning season in 2023, people had high expectations for the 2024 LSU Women’s Basketball team. Between the return of stars like Angel Reese and Flau’jae Johnson, the polarizing Kim Mulkey and the transfer of Hailey Van Lith, there were a lot of eyes on the Lady Tigers this season. Ultimately, they took the good with the bad.
A season opening loss to Colorado had fans questioning how this LSU team would stack up against the powerhouses they faced last year to win the title. Internal dramas also began early in the season with Kim Mulkey announcing Kateri Poole was no longer with the team and refusing to explain why Angel Reese sat on the bench for a four game stretch. And just as they started to settle into a groove, they took three losses in two weeks during SEC play.
“We just got work to do,” Flau’jae Johnson said after the South Carolina loss. “We got work to do as a team, our coaches, me being a leader. I have work to do in those moments. I think it’s just going to be continuing to play together.”
Despite its struggles, the Purple and Gold earned its place in the SEC Championship and prepared for a highly anticipated South Carolina rematch. The drama continued as an altercation between Flau’jae Johnson and South Carolina’s Kamilla Cardoso occurred after Johnson fouled her teammate. After falling short to the Gamecocks again, LSU shifted focus to the NCAA tournament while facing another possible distraction: a Washington Post feature story on head coach Kim Mulkey.
“You can criticize coaches all you want,” Mulkey said after the Sweet 16 victory over UCLA. “That’s our business. You can come at us and say ‘you’re the worst coach in America. I hate you. I hate you and everything about you.’ But the one thing I’m not going to let you do is criticize young people.”
Published just hours before their Sweet 16 game, The Washington Post piece was not widely regarded as the hit piece many people expected. The Los Angeles Times also published an article about the Lady Tigers before their Sweet 16 appearance framing them as the villains of college women’s basketball. Regardless of the noise, they went from sweet to elite and geared up for a national championship rematch against Iowa. The matchup lived up to all the hype with a tied game at half and a combined 181 points scored, but this time LSU couldn’t get the job done.
They may not have won another national championship, but the LSU Women’s Basketball team may have accomplished something bigger. Their Elite 8 matchup with Iowa averaged 12.3 million viewers, making it the most watched women’s basketball game in history. A lot of people have said a lot of things, positive and negative, about this team. However, they cannot say they didn’t grow the game of women’s basketball.
