Mulkey brings championship pedigree, LSU rolls out the purple carpet for new coach
Scooter Hobbs
Kim Mulkey hit the LSU campus Monday with all the fire and intensity she’s been known for as a three-time national championship coach at Baylor to go with the two she won as a player at Louisiana Tech.
It was a whirlwind tour from the moment LSU rolled out the purple carpet to greet the school’s private jet delivering the Tickfaw native to take over the Tigers’ women’s basketball program.
There was baseball coach Paul Mainieri, who’d coached her son Kramer Robertson with the Tigers.
“You took a cocky little boy and made him a man,” she told Mainieri. “To you I’m forever grateful.”
There was D-D Breaux, the recently retired gymnastics coach who proved to Mulkey that women’s athletics could matter at LSU.
Athletic director Scott Woodward, who closed the deal with a 10-minute phone call was there.
Once on campus, football coach Ed Orgeron was part of the greeting party — Mulkey immediately imitated his gravel voice to admonish him for calling her m’am. “You’re older than me.”
By the time she was formally introduced to combination pep rally/press conference late Monday afternoon, it almost had as much pomp and circumstance as a royal coronation, complete with welcome home from Gov. John Bel Edwards, who, like Mulkey, also grew up in Tangipahoa Parish.
So Mulkey eventually stood before a bigger crowd in LSU’s Maravich Assembly Center than the program has drawn for a game in years. She pointed at the five Women’s Basketball Final Four banners and noted that something was missing.
“Nowhere on there does it say ‘National Champions’ ” she said. “That’s what I came here to do.”
The “why?” was the nagging question for Mulkey, who built her Hall of Fame coaching career at Baylor and, with her legacy forever secure there, seemingly had it all with the Bears, including a $2.27 million salary.
‘First thing you’re going to say is, God, she got a boat load of money,” Mulkey told the crowd. My boat does not float because of money.”
But, yes, she admitted, “It did take some money to get me away from Baylor, but that was not the deciding factor, I can assure you.”
Bottom line?
“I had many opportunities to leave,” she said. “This is the only one that could get me to leave.”
LSU first contacted her early last week, she said. An offer came late in the week. Then the 10-minute phone call with Woodward, of which she didn’t care to reveal the details.
“I mulled over it until (Sunday) afternoon. You can’t give an answer like that immediately. I wanted to cover all my bases at Baylor.”
Maybe it was the food.
“I can’t wait to eat Ponchatoula strawberries,” she said. “I can’t wait to eat some crawfish. I miss my food from Louisiana.”
Or the Louisiana humor.
“I can now tell Boudreaux and Thibodeaux jokes and people don’t look at me like I lost my mind.”
Basically, she said, it was the one part of Woodward’s phone call she didn’t mind sharing.
He told her, “It was time for Kim to come home.”
“It touched home with me and it touched my heart. You don’t forget where you came from,” she said. “If you have followed my career I have said it numerous times, no matter where my career takes me, Louisiana is my home.
“I came back to my home state.”
It’s not, of course, her alma mater that she’s taking over.
But she said she was in Tiger Stadium in 1972 — she’d have been 10 years old then — when Hammond’s Brad David caught the buzzer-beating touchdown pass that beat Ole Miss.
And she can still name Dale Brown’s starting five on LSU’s 1981 Final Four team.
“I already knew how special a place this can be,” she said.
There was only one slight disclaimer.
“I don’t want you to be misled and think I can take a team and overnight make them champions,” she said. “But I can make them better each day.”
She closed with another Orgeron imitation:
“Geaux Tigahs!”
New LSU women’s basketball head coach Kim Mulkey speaks at an introductory news conference for her at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center, Monday, April 26, 2021.