The Reveille’s Tyler Harden had the opportunity for an exclusive one-on-one interview with LSU women’s basketball head coach Kim Mulkey. The following article and all quotes within it come from that interview.
In Kim Mulkey’s eighth grade year, her basketball team went undefeated.
At the time, the feat was the peak moment of her playing career. She then went onto win four state championships in high school, two national championships in college at Louisiana Tech, a gold medal at the 1984 Olympics and four college national titles as a head coach.
But Mulkey will tell you that eighth grade season weighs the same to her.
“I would never tell you one is more important than the other,” Mulkey said. “Your journey and things that you did along the way were so meaningful for you personally, and I don’t ever forget it.”
When Mulkey finds something as important in her journey, it’s important. Whether it’s a successful eighth grade basketball season or a collegiate national title, it’s important for a reason, and is held with pride.
Lots of what’s important to her in her journey involves basketball, but basketball wasn’t at the forefront for her at first: Her first love was softball.
She spent her summers playing with her travel softball team. When she wasn’t with her softball team, she played Dixie Youth Baseball and Pony League Baseball.
Mulkey tried out all the sports she could in school. At that age, she didn’t have to choose just one sport, but when it came down to what sport could take her to college and pay for her education, she had to make a decision.
Softball may have been her first love, but the winning she had in basketball was too much to ignore. With four straight state championships at Hammond High School, she continued her basketball career at the next level.
“I thought it was the one that would pay for my college education,” Mulkey said. “I would get a full scholarship and I was good enough and it just kind of happened.”
Mulkey took her career to Louisiana Tech, and the winning came with her. Her Lady Techsters advanced to four Final Fours and won the national title in the 1981 and 1982 seasons.
After her senior year at Louisiana Tech, where her team finished with a 30-3 record and a Final Four appearance, she went onto play in the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, where her U.S. team won a gold medal by 31 points over Canada.
That gold medal marked the end of her playing career and the start of a new chapter of her life. She stayed at Louisiana Tech and worked toward her master’s in business administration.
“My thought was, ‘I’m going to get this master’s in business. I’m going to fly all over the country and be a CEO of a Fortune 500 company,” Mulkey said.
That was the plan for Mulkey, until the Louisiana Tech president, the late Dr. F. Jay Taylor, called her in his office.
Taylor wanted Mulkey to return to basketball in a different capacity and coach alongside head coach Leon Barmore. At first, Mulkey refused, wanting to put her basketball experience at Louisiana Tech to rest, but because of her relationship with Taylor, she changed her mind.
“Dr. Taylor was a visionary, and he started the program at Louisiana Tech,” Mulkey said. “I just didn’t want to let him down.”
Mulkey told Taylor she’d give him one season. She knew the game, and she knew how Barmore operated, but she never saw the game from the coaching side. She had to learn to recruit and how to do all the things that needed to be done as an assistant coach.
In her first season as an assistant coach, she helped the Lady Techsters to a 27-5 record and an Elite Eight appearance.
After that, the one season she promised turned into 15 years.
Mulkey’s 15 year-career as an assistant and associate head coach at Louisiana Tech finished with seven Final Fours and a national championship in 1988.
As her coaching career at Louisiana Tech progressed, Mulkey received several offers to become a head coach.
“I turned three jobs down as an assistant…it was [Texas] A&M, it was Missouri and it was South Carolina,” Mulkey said. “Good jobs, wonderful jobs, but I was like, “no, I don’t know, I don’t think I’m ready.”
When Mulkey became ready, Baylor just happened to be the school on the phone that offered her a head coaching position. Mulkey took the job at Baylor in 2000, but it was a move that required leaving her home state of Louisiana.
“I cried, probably the first two to three months, every night,” Mulkey said.
She arrived in Waco to a Baylor program that was fresh off a 7-20 season and a last place finish in the Big 12.
While there were tears from leaving her home state, she went to work and worked to build the Baylor women’s basketball program into a national contender.
The process started with a skill that Mulkey learned while being an assistant at Louisiana Tech: recruiting. She and her staff went after players that made Baylor a priority in their recruitment.
“We went after the right players that we could honestly get that believed in us, that wanted to get a good education from Baylor and help us build a program,” Mulkey said. “We didn’t go out and try to compete to come in second and third place, or to get a visit out of them.”
After NCAA Tournament appearances in three of Mulkey’s first four seasons, including a Sweet 16 appearance in 2004, she and her Baylor Bears finally reached the mountain top, winning a national title in 2005.
It was then that Mulkey had started a dynasty.
After her first national title at Baylor, she never missed an NCAA Tournament for the next 15 seasons (excluding 2020 due to COVID-19) and advanced to 13 Sweet 16s, nine Elite Eights, three Final Fours and won two national titles.
She helped develop players like Brittney Griner, a member of the 2012 national championship team; Sophia Young, a member of the 2005 national championship team; and NaLyssa Smith, a member of the 2019 national championship team, into top WNBA draft picks.
Mulkey had a good thing going at Baylor and easily could have continued her dynasty there. But another opportunity arose: an opportunity to return to Louisiana.
That opening was at LSU. Mulkey didn’t go to school at LSU, and she had no ties to LSU. But taking the job in Baton Rouge was important to her.
“I wanted to make the state proud, not just LSU people,” Mulkey said. “I wanted all the people in the state to be proud of the flagship university, whether you’re an LSU fan or not.”
Unlike her arrival at Baylor, Mulkey inherited a more established LSU women’s basketball program. While LSU had not been to the NCAA Tournament since 2018, the program had been to five Final Fours and had produced WNBA greats like Seimone Augustus and Sylvia Fowles.
The starting point of her time at LSU was much further ahead than her start at Baylor, but there was something at LSU that she couldn’t find: a national championship.
She promised the people at LSU she would change that and bring their women’s basketball program a championship.
“I came back here to be a positive,” Mulkey said.
Her first season at LSU put the nation on notice, as she helped her team make an appearance in the second round of the NCAA Tournament as a No. 3 seed. That success piqued the interest of players around the country who might want to join the Tigers.
Maryland forward Angel Reese was one of the top players available in the transfer portal, and she could have played for just about any program of her choice. But she believed in Mulkey’s vision and chose LSU.
Mulkey knew LSU was already an established enough program to be in the national spotlight, and the transfers she recruited after her first season helped strengthen that growing vision.
What she didn’t know was how quickly that vision would become a reality.
LSU was a No. 3 seed once again in the 2023 NCAA Tournament, and with wins over No. 2 seed Utah in the Sweet 16 and No. 1 seed Virginia Tech in the Final Four, the Tigers found themselves in the national title game with No. 2 seed Iowa.
Mulkey’s LSU team was an underdog and weren’t expected to be able to contain Iowa’s Caitlin Clark from making deep shots from all over the floor. But just as being in the position they were in so quickly was unexpected to Mulkey, defeating Iowa 102-85 was unexpected as well.
Mulkey won her fourth national championship, and she did so after just two seasons in Baton Rouge.
“I knew there [LSU] was a place that could win at that level, but no way were you ever going to think that you could win one in two years,” Mulkey said. “I came back to win one, but no way I could have told you two years.”
Regardless of the timing, Mulkey did exactly what she sought to do at LSU. From taking her basketball career to the collegiate level, becoming a coach, taking a job at Baylor and returning to Louisiana to coach at LSU, it was all about the journey to Mulkey and accomplishing things that were important to her.
But after helping LSU win its first women’s basketball national title, Mulkey sat in her office at her desk and had a realization.
She, her players, assistant coaches and support staff all received their championship rings, but there were people who were missing them and were deserving of a ring.
Her past coaches. The people that paved the way for her success.
“They’re all still alive except one, and so I bought all of them a national championship ring,” Mulkey said. “I didn’t get to where I am as a coach without all the lessons, good or bad, that they taught me along the way.”
Included in that group of coaches was Fairy Hannible, Mulkey’s eighth grade basketball coach. Mulkey’s memories with Hannible never dissipated and never lost their importance.
Her journey included changes of plans, national championships and Olympic medals. But she couldn’t remember the journey without remembering the beginning, when her eighth grade basketball team went undefeated.