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What to know about LSU women’s basketball coach

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1 week ago

March 25, 2024

LSU head coach Kim Mulkey gives directions in Sunday's come-from-behind win against Middle Tennessee State.

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Final season when LSU beat Iowa for the NCAA title, Kim Mulkey grew to become the primary coach within the girls’s sport to guide two faculties to nationwide championships. She was additionally the primary individual to win titles as a coach and participant (she attended Louisiana Tech).

Earlier than arriving at LSU in April 2021, Mulkey had led Baylor to a few nationwide titles and 19 NCAA Match appearances in 20 years. In 2012, she led the Bears to the primary 40-0 mark in NCAA historical past.

Here is what to know concerning the LSU coach as Mulkey has the Tigers again within the Candy 16 this 12 months:

How a lot does Mulkey make as LSU girls’s basketball head coach?

Mulkey is the highest paid Division I girls’s basketball coach at $3.26 million this season, in accordance with USA TODAY’s evaluate of compensation for Division I coaches. She is paid greater than South Carolina’s Daybreak Staley and Connecticut’s Geno Auriemma, who each make $3.1 million.

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Mulkey stated when athletic director Scott Woodward recruited her, she didn’t demand a sure wage for herself or assistants.

“I by no means put a greenback determine on something (throughout negotiations),” Mulkey stated. “What I did ask was, ‘Are you making a monetary funding? I have to let you know what I make at Baylor. Are you saying that you simply wish to rent me and my workers with the understanding that we’re not taking a pay lower?’ ”

How outdated is Kim Mulkey?

Mulkey, who grew up in Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana, taking part in baseball and basketball, is 61. She led Hammond Excessive College to 4 consecutive state championships and was class valedictorian with an ideal 4.0 grade level common.

Mulkey as a Louisiana Tech basketball star

As a participant, she was a button of some extent guard, a fierce competitor who wore her hair in French braided pigtails. Throughout a world tour with Group USA in 1982, Mulkey tried to take a cost on the Soviet Union’s 7-footer Uliana Semenova. The collision despatched each gamers crashing to the ground. No foul was known as, however Mulkey later advised a sportswriter that “it was nonetheless a terrific feeling.” She received a nationwide championship with Louisiana Tech and a gold medal on Pat Summitt’s 1984 Olympic group.

Mulkey and her penchant for over-the-top outfits on sport day

From butterflies to rhinestones to feathers, Mulkey turns heads on sport day for her colourful and distinctive ensembles. She appears to relish the eye her style brings to the sport.

“There are LSU girls who’re graduates, who’re well-known designers, and so they ship me jackets and say … ‘Coach, fairly actually, I do not know something about basketball, however I’ll come simply to see what you put on,’ ” Mulkey stated final 12 months on the Closing 4. “Properly, you recognize what, I would like people who come to the video games for that cause to maintain coming, and I would like them to study the sport of basketball.

“People who come due to basketball, overlook what I put on on the sideline, take a look at the product on the ground. Do not make what I put on greater than what’s on that flooring and what I’ve achieved X’s and O’s-wise as a coach,” she stated. “But when me carrying their jackets and issues like that helps them however it additionally sells yet another ticket or places yet another set of eyeballs on our sport, so be it.”