NCAA WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: FIRST ROUND - LSU VS JACKSON STATE

March 18, 2022

Kim Mulkey

LSU Tigers

Media Conference

MODERATOR: Coach, welcome home and congratulations on making the tournament.

COACH MULKEY: Thank you. I don't have an opening statement. You guys hit me with your best shots.

Q. Coach, if you could give us an update on Alexis and where she stands. Obviously we'll see her at practice or won't see her at practice. My question for you is the same I had for the players, how do you do more without trying to do too much?

COACH MULKEY: Alexis was in practice yesterday. I anticipate her to be in practice today. I think y'all have a little open time that you can see us. So you'll GET to evaluate her for yourselves. So that's the Alexis question.

How do you get more? Well, you can't reinvent the wheel here this late in the season. But if you're referring to how do we do more if I don't play Alexis, we've played three games without Alexis. She got injured in that first minute of the Alabama game, we won. We went to Tennessee and won. And I don't think anybody was going to beat Kentucky in the SEC tournament. So we'll just keep trying to do what we've done since she's been gone if she doesn't play. Now, if she's out there practicing and I get a good feel for it and we need her, she'll play. We still got a few more days. It was good to have her back yesterday and it was good to see her out there.

Q. How much does I guess Jackson State winning 21 in a row catch your attention and your players' attention, like this is a really formal opponent we're playing?

COACH MULKEY: Well, they caught my attention last year. We played them in the first round when I was at Baylor. Pretty much they have I think three starters back, same coach, some transfers in there. When you win as many games as they've won in a row, that gets your attention if you don't know anything about their personnel, I don't think they've lost a game since December. They ran the table in the SWAC. They're like fourth in the country in scoring, second in rebound margin. All that grabs your attention. We have common opponents that we've played. They've played SEC people, and of course, you know we do. So I look at all those films and I look at all those statistics. They're very well coached. They're very confident. They're very talented. And it's going to be a heck of a game.

Q. Kim, because you stuck with pretty much the same eight players all year, having so much time off may have been beneficial. Did you see a benefit to it from the practice, from their response in practice?

COACH MULKEY: Well, everybody's tired. Everybody's tired mentally this time of year. Some teams are physically tired. So you have to be careful with how much time you give them off, and yet you still have to stay in rhythm and in sync. So I feel like we've done the right thing when we are on the floor we're not on the floor long. We get our job done and we get off the floor. So if we lose, it won't be because of the two-week layoff. If we win, it won't be because of the two-week layoff. Everybody has gotta go play.

Q. Coach, how would you describe the challenges that their center, Williams-Holliday presents, All Conference Player of the Year?

COACH MULKEY: Well, the same challenges when you play against any of these big-time centers in the SEC. It's the same. She's a big presence. She's the Player of the Year in that league, and I want to say she even got Defensive Player of the Year in that league. So she's good. We're aware of that. We know we have our hands full there. And we will prepare for her just like we do for any big post in our league. But she's not all they have. They put up a lot of points. And Rogan, their perimeter player, was the Player of the Year in the conference last year. So basically I look at it like they have two Player of the Years in the SWAC.

Q. You talked at the beginning of the season about the modest goals, winning season and ten wins and beating a ranked team. As these things have piled up, like I asked Jailin, and they've transitioned from being a team that is aspirational to a team that's like got something to play for, not defend, but they've got the target. How do you think they've handled that?

COACH MULKEY: To this point I think they've handled everything just great. They've handled losses good. They have handled success and wins good. As I said, there is no bad ending. There is no written thing -- none of you can write anything sorry or bad about this team. You could say, well, you were a 3 seed and if we were to get beat tomorrow, then let's just compliment the team that had to beat us. They had to play good. Because none of us saw this coming. It's been an unbelievable -- it's almost a storybook year. And you know I've been involved in 40 and 0 seasons and expectations and building a program. This is going to rank in there as a season for the record books, in a lot of ways. The SEC, biggest turn around in the history of the SEC. Ranked in the top -- almost the Top 5 in the country at one point. Competing against teams that, honestly, have much more talent, much more depth, but yet, this team believes in this coaching staff. This team is talented, and it's just a storybook season as far as I'm concerned, and we're going to know that no matter what happens, if Alexis plays, doesn't play, whoever we play, I just feel like they're either going to be just so, so much more talented than us or they had an unbelievable game. And you can live with that. If we keep winning and we play well, I'm going to come up here and I'm going to put a smile on my face and say how blessed I am and this storybook keeps going for another week or another day or another game.

Q. Coach, you talked about these veterans on your team and what they bring to the table. How do you make this moment not as big as it is, even though they are experienced, they're new to this environment?

COACH MULKEY: I think two things. One, the SEC prepares them for that. Two, they're already mature. These guys have been in some tough battles throughout their career, and now they're getting to enjoy some of those battles. So, and thirdly, we can talk about it, and there's nothing I can tell them that would prepare them any more than what they've already experienced by playing in the SEC.

Q. What's it like for you at this point in your life and career sitting here in this stadium with the March Madness logo representing the flagship university in your home state?

COACH MULKEY: Well, it was unexpected. I don't think any of us sitting in this room ever saw this day coming. I can tell you that my tenure at Baylor was unbelievable. I can tell you I never saw myself leaving Baylor. But as we all learn in life, you gotta expect the unexpected sometimes, and to sit here in my home state, in the very first year with a team that won nine basketball games last year as a 3 seed this year, a sell-out crowd in our first year, hosting in our first year, what is there not to like about it? What criticism could ever come the way of this program and this team this year in there's none. And so enjoy it, play hard. Just give it everything you have. And I think that is what the -- I think that's what drew the fans here. Certainly, winning does. Winning keeps them in the stands for years to come, but what brought them into the arena this quick? I think it's a lot of things. I think it's my connections to the state of Louisiana. People feel like they either know me or they're related to me. No. 2, I think when they -- second game of the year we lost. And people left there going I'm coming back. That was fun. Those kids played hard. And I think it was just word of mouth, and it became a snowball effect. And it wasn't just Baton Rouge. You're seeing people come to these games from all over the state. They drive two and three hours, and just something to be proud of, I think, by the way we play.

Q. Coach, I wanted to ask you about your staff. Certainly Sytia was one of those people that said, Coach, are you sure we want to do this? We have a Final Four team in Baylor and whatnot. But they all got on board and they all came over for the most part. What does that say, because certainly a lot of teams when the coach goes to another school, the staff says we're not going or we're staying or whatever, and you were able to get the whole team basically to come with you?

COACH MULKEY: When you leave a place, you always want the place that you leave to hire your assistants. They helped recruit those players to that institution. And so Sytia wanted the job. Bill Brock wanted the job. Neither one of them got the job. But I made sure before I took this job that everybody on my staff was offered the opportunity to come with me to LSU. And they all did, with the exception of Bill Brock and my daughter Makenzie. I can't take this kind of job without them. It would have been very difficult for me to say yes to LSU when I knew the staff was not coming with me, because they have been with me, a lot of them, for 20-plus years, some for eight and nine years. They do all the things for me to where all I have to do in recruiting is close the deals. All I have to do in coaching is make decisions through the course of a game. They know how I want things done. They know how I think. They know my strengths. They cover for my weaknesses. They're very loyal. And they're just good people. And all of them have roles to play. Some are Xs and O roles on the floor. Some are roles that I don't want to do budget; I don't want to do scheduling. Tell me when I run out of money. Tell me what hotel, when I get off that plane, point me in a direction. I don't care about all of that. And when you have people that are taking care of you as a head coach, you will remain a head coach a lot longer than maybe you're supposed to, because they're young and they are doing the job for you.

Q. It's good object the queen.

COACH MULKEY: I'm not a queen. I can tell you, I think I'm smart, because I think outside the box when I hire people. I think outside the box. I've always had like for years I had three head coaches on my staff from schools, from colleges. How many head coaches are insecure and wouldn't do that? I want them to keep me on my toes. And I also think outside the box and go get people that are not Xs and O minds, but boy, they'd be darn good in this area that I want to be really good at as a program. So I just think I'm pretty careful in who I've hired, and it's been a good group. I still have two of them that have been with me from the day I was hired at Baylor. And then I have some that have been with me eight and nine years, that had been a head coach before.

Q. The question was what kind of game day coach are you? Do you want to give them a message that they go out there with their hair on fire or are you really more a you've been here before, you know what to do?

COACH MULKEY: I'm not passive. That's certainly not it. I don't go in there with some planned pregame speech, I gotta sit at home and think about what I want to say to them. No, what I'm saying to them through the course of that week leading up to that game is a little bit of everything on the practice court, so that by the time you get to that 30 minutes or whatever before they run out there on the floor, you've done your job. You've prepared them. You say the prayer, and you go out there on the floor and do your job.

Q. This is off the subject a little bit, but I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you how concerned you are about Brittney Griner and the situation she's in. Have you been keeping up with it?

COACH MULKEY: I know what y'all know. I found out about it after a game from somebody sending it to me, and you just pray that everything works out and she gets home safely.

Q. Seems to me, covering games here for a long time, they may have sold more tickets for this NCAA tournament than any other time they've hosted it. Have you kept up with that at all?

COACH MULKEY: I have not. Tell me what y'all know.

Q. I was just looking at the map of the tickets, and there's not many spots left.

COACH MULKEY: Wow. That's awesome. That's awesome.

Q. The lower bowl is sold out. I know that. Over 7,000.

COACH MULKEY: That's awesome. No, I haven't kept up with it. I'm not surprised. I'm appreciative. I know the players are appreciate. And, yeah, it's -- it's postseason. It's do or die now. And I said this when I took the job: People here know what it feels like to have great women's basketball. They've seen this PMAC full. They've been to Final Fours. And for them to do it this quickly with this team, in this first year, with this staff, it just -- it reiterated that I made the right decision to come back, because people are just kind of excited, kind of happy. And it makes me happy.