LSU conducts last home practice Tuesday before heading to Final Four
As LSU concluded its last practice of the season on its homecourt Tuesday morning before departing in the afternoon for the women’s Final Four semifinal in Dallas, Lady Tigers head coach Kim Mulkey called her team to midcourt for one last message.
“You’re getting ready to play a number one seed (Virginia Tech) and we've not done that,” Mulkey told her players. “You're getting ready to play a young lady (Tech center Elizabeth Kitley) who is a finalist for not one but two awards. We don't have anybody on our team that's a finalist for any award.
“Are we satisfied? Are we patting ourselves on the back and saying `Hey, this is as far as we can go.’ Are you still hungry?”
Mulkey, telling that anecdote in a Tuesday press conference, said she received the response that her 31-2 Lady Tigers were ready to move on to face the 31-4 Hokies in Friday night’s first semifinal at 6 p.m. in the American Airlines Center.
“When you have kids that are hungry and not satisfied to just be there, you're going to go compete,” Mulkey said. “Whether we win or lose, we will compete.”
With Virginia Tech, Mulkey is seeing the maturation of a team she faced in the 2021 NCAA tournament in one of her last games as Baylor’s coach before leaving to return home to Louisiana to resuscitate LSU's dead-in-the-swamp water program.
Her Lady Bears, which eventually lost in the regional finals to UConn, demolished Tech 90-48 in a second-round game played in San Antonio in an NCAA-mandated COVID-19 bubble. The Hokies got 18 points that day from then-freshman guard Georgia Amoore and just 6 points and a rebound from then-sophomore Kitley.
Kitley, now a 6-6 senior center, has blossomed into Tech’s all-time career scoring leader who’s currently averaging 18.2 points and 10.7 rebounds. Amoore, a 5-6 guard, averages 16.4 points, is second nationally in 3-pointers made and is averaging 24 points in the NCAA tournament.
“When those young ladies were freshmen and sophomores, you saw the talent,” Mulkey said. “So you knew if he (Tech head coach Kenny Brooks) could keep them together, which he did, that they were just going to be phenomenal.
“They're older and they've been together. He hasn't had a lot of them transfer out. He's brought in a few, but they don't play a lot of players. So, they have that continuity together.
“Kitley is a problem with her height and her ability to shoot a face-up jumper. Amoore, boy she’s got range and she's got a just a deadly step back move out there on the perimeter.”
Brooks said in his Tuesday media conference he remembered his postgame conversation with Mulkey following the 2021 NCAA tournament loss.
“Behind her mask she gave me a vote of confidence, some encouragement,” Brooks said. “She said, `Behind that mask, Kenny, I know you're smiling. Today we played as good as we could play, but you just have babies, and you're going to be good’ She patted me on the chest and she said, `You're going to be good, good luck to you.’”
Here’s Mulkey on other subjects:
On a different type of Wilson basketballs being used in the NCAA tournament as a reason for poor shooting
“I first heard about the ball when I was watching the men's tournament, and then when the balls were shipped to us in the first and second rounds, I didn't pay much attention to it.
“But then when I heard you get new balls I think is what they told me at every round, and I started seeing not just how poorly we were shooting the ball but handling the ball. You know, our ball handlers coming up that floor and been doing it all their life and all of a sudden you see that ball take a big bounce on you, it's not the floor, I don't think. I know the floors are new. I know they ship in new floors at different places, but that was my first deal as a ball handler, it just doesn't look like it's smooth.
“Then watching some of the men's games as they got deeper (into the tournament) and I thought that is a normal, easy jump shot for these guys that they're just clanking off the rim.
“Then of course the Miami (regional finals) game with us, I meant it not as anything but the honest truth. That was just ugly. It was ugly. Nobody could make a shot. One three-pointer out of both teams? It wasn't a great defense that was keeping the shots from going in, it was just missed shots.
“My description of the ball after just getting it and holding it is it reminds me – and I'm sure it's not, I'm sure it's the best that Wilson has, but it's different. The old Wilsons that we've seen have the darker leather and you can just grip them really good and they just kind of flow. These remind me, for lack of a better description, of if you went outside and you needed basketballs to last for a long period of time but yet good balls, not rubber balls, it kind of just reminds me of that.
“But (Iowa’s) Caitlin Clark can hit 41 (points) with those balls. A lot of other people have adjusted to it. I just think that until I can get a grasp of it with my own team and hold it, it's a little bit different. It's different.”
On her sideline fashion
“Fashion is just a professional thing about me. If you do your homework on me, you will see that clothes have always been important to me, from the time I was in grade school, I wanted to look nice. I wanted to dress nice. Through my years at Louisiana Tech, I used to wear dresses a lot, and then as I became a head coach, it was harder for me to squat on the sideline in a dress. So I quit wearing dresses, but I've always, always felt like I need to look nice. I need to be professional.
“Now, what has changed from the time since I was at Baylor to now is the stylists. There are LSU women who are graduates, who are famous designers, and they send me jackets and say, "Coach, you have to do this, this is who we are, this is Louisiana. We like the glit, we like all that stuff. Coach, quite honestly, I don't know anything about basketball, but I will come just to see what you wear."
“Well, you know what, I want those that come to the games for that reason to keep coming, and I want them to learn the game of basketball. Those that come because of basketball, forget what I wear on the sideline, look at the product on the floor. Don't make what I wear bigger than what's on that floor and what I have done X's and O's-wise as a coach.
“But if me wearing their jackets and things like that helps them but it also sells one more ticket or puts one more set of eyeballs on our game, so be it. But those fashions don't shoot, dribble or anything like that or win a game for us. But it's the modern social media world we live in, but I've always dressed nice. It's just a little bit more glitzy because of where I live and the stylists.”
On her emotions of playing 90 minutes away from the Baylor campus in Waco and why she left in March 2021 to take the LSU job
“You never spend 21 years of your life building a dynasty, and that's what we did at Baylor. I think we can all agree with that. I still have a home there. My grandchildren are there. So, my heart will always be there.
“But the timing in my life told me it was time to come back to LSU and put women's basketball back where it properly belongs.
“I have lifelong friends there (in Texas). There will be Baylor people sitting in my section that are heartbroken that I left. I get it. Someday when I'm retired, maybe I'll write another book and have more details, but I love Baylor University, the fans there, the Lady Bear fans there. But it was time. Timing is everything in life.
“It's the same way when I left Louisiana Tech. I'm not a coach that lives out of a suitcase. I have been fortunate to be able to choose where I go, and I have not moved much in my career. I left Louisiana Tech after 19 years, 15 as a coach and four as a player, and went to Baylor, and it wasn't because Baylor was killing it in women's basketball. It was the school that was on the phone with me at the time in my life that I was ready to make that move.
“LSU was on the phone with me at that time when I was ready to make a move. Can you name a coach in men's or women's basketball that did what I did, that left a dynasty that was basically theirs? So, I had no blueprint. I had nobody to call. It was my gut and timing in life that told me this is the right move to make.”