The biggest win-loss turnaround so far in one season in SEC history and the fifth ever best flip in college basketball history by a first-year women’s head coach.
The largest season-home attendance – 112,983 – in program history and more than the previous four seasons combined.
A school record of more than 4,500 season tickets sold.
Twenty-five regular season wins for the first time since 2007-08, a No. 6 Associated Press national ranking and a second-place regular season finish in the SEC behind No. 1 ranked South Carolina.
A possible No. 2 seed in the NCAA tournament and likely hosting first and second round tournament games for the first time since 2014.
There has not been a head coach in LSU history in any sport that has changed the attitude, perception and direction of a program from one season to the next as dramatically as Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Kim Mulkey.
Never has LSU hired a head coach – and a South Louisiana native as a bonus – with a resume filled with six national championships including three as Baylor’s head coach where she spent 21 seasons until she was swayed last April by LSU athletic director Scott Woodward to come home to oyster po-boys and Ponchatoula strawberries.
Never has LSU hired a head coach who has pushed all the right buttons on and off the court to immediately connect with her team and the fan base. She’s a “How’s your Momma and them?” Louisianian through and through. She’s never met a stranger and if you’re from Louisiana there’s a chance she knows somebody you know.
Though LSU has never won a national championship in women’s basketball, it has played in six Final Fours (5 NCAA, 1 AIAW) and produced some of the greatest women’s players history. Mulkey made it a point involve former greats like Seimone Augustus and Sylvia Fowles in the program and Mulkey and has sent special boxes of LSU basketball apparel around the country to former players.
But there wouldn’t be such a buzz nationally about the 25-4 Tigers heading into this week’s SEC tournament in Nashville had Mulkey not dramatically improved the product on the court with a 12½-game turnaround (and counting) over last season. The win total was accelerated by a five-member senior class headed by grad students Khayla Pointer, Faustine Aifuwa and Jailin Cherry.
“We were blessed to come here and inherit seniors that stayed and bought into what we were doing,” said Mulkey, 59, who also owns the third best win-loss turnaround in college basketball history as a first-year head coach at Baylor in 2000-01. “And it wasn't easy for them. It wasn't easy for us. You don't build trust and you don't build those relationships as quickly as we did. So, that tells you a lot about them. They were hungry and they believed in us and they kick started what we hope to continue in the future.”
While Mulkey was cautiously optimistic – “I just stay focused in the moment and try to get us better every day, so I couldn't project where we’d be at this point,” she said – Pointer, Aifuwa and Cherry immediately felt surges of confidence from coach.
Mulkey’s coaching method is startlingly simplistic but extremely effective. Drill her players with repetitive fundamentals, put them in places on the court that emphasizes their strengths and hides their weaknesses and then constantly infuse them with confidence.
“Sometimes (new) coaches come in and they try to change everything,” said Aifuwa, who has raised her field goal percentage by more than 10 points this season from last year. “But she (Mulkey) came in, bought in and she didn't try to change anything. She instilled confidence and it has continued the whole season.”
Cherry, the Tigers’ swiss army knife who fills the stat sheet taking whatever role is required depending on matchups, has seen her game rise because she has less dips in confidence than in the past.
“Confidence has been my biggest downfall,” Cherry said a few weeks ago. “I always doubted myself in previous years when shots didn’t fall. This year if I miss a shot or turn it over, I might get down a little bit but I’m able to pick myself back up quicker and still be in the game.”
Because if Mulkey senses Cherry starts lagging in confidence, she nips it in the bud.
“We’ve had a few of those moments,” Mulkey said. “I don’t ignore it. I address it. I will take you out of a game on no defense or body language. I will never take you out of a game unless you take bad shots. You don’t come out for missed shots.”
Mulkey has made sure her team celebrates wins and milestones because it’s something the upperclassmen – “We’ve never played in front of this many fans,” Pointer said – have never experienced.
“I always am big on telling them to enjoy the moment,” Mulkey said. “Then, I can quickly put them in another place when I say, `If what you did yesterday still looks big to you today, then you haven't done much today. People forget yesterday. Now, let’s do something else unbelievable.'"
LSU has been so starved for success in women’s basketball for more than a decade as the program gradually declined under previous coach Nikki Fargas that this season seems to have already placed the program back among the elite powers.
Mulkey, who also won two national championships as a dynamo point guard (also one as an assistant coach) at Louisiana Tech as well as an Olympic gold medal and four state championships at Hammond High, will have none of that talk.
“You have to have some level of two, three, four and five years of consistency to say the program is back,” Mulkey said. “You hear it all the time. I see it in college football. You see these kids go win an exciting bowl game and they're go `We’re back” and then the next year they get their butts kicked.
"We're having a great year. But I don't want people to think we're feeding the monster all of a sudden. Okay, you're not. You're having seniors that are just playing their rear ends off.”
Mulkey knows what’s ahead. She may have one starter returning next season in what is her first true rebuild year. She has a top 10 nationally-rated recruiting class, led by McDonald’s All-American guard Flaujae Johnson.
She also will definitely hit the transfer portal and will likely land some notable players who will be attracted to LSU because of Mulkey’s unparalleled track record of success. They’ve seen the passion in which she coaches every game – it’s like her 40-minute exercise class – and believe she will squeeze every ounce of improvement from them.
Before the start of this season in three-hour preseason practices. Mulkey’s team was truly introduced to everything she is as a coach, especially her attention to detail.
Mulkey was rather blunt with her on-the-spot criticism saying things such as, “I can live with somebody who doesn’t understand the game. But I can’t coach lazy ass people. Go into the (transfer) portal because I can’t coach lazy ass people.”
And the next minute, Mulkey was cracking jokes.
The team’s veterans, like Aifuwa, knew then they would probably have the best season of their careers.
“You see a coach all in and she’s locked in for 40 minutes, it makes you want to be locked in for 40 minutes and go hard for her,” Aifuwa said during the dog days of preseason practice. “You’ve seen on TV (in games) how much effort she puts in for her players and now you see it in practice.
“I know I can play my heart out for a coach like Kim Mulkey because she’s going to do the same for me.”
Now and forever more.
