LSU's Kim Mulkey Addresses Washington Post Story, "Distractions" Off The Floor

Mulkey brushed off the piece written about her, prepared for Elite Eight contest on Monday.

LSU head coach Kim Mulkey has been in headlines over the last 10 days, and despite it all, her program is headed back to the Elite Eight with a showdown against Caitlin Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes locked in.

Mulkey detailed a few off the floor topics along with LSU's victory over UCLA on Saturday.

The full Q/A from Saturday in New York:

Q. Kim, how did you think the officiating affected the game? There were a lot of close calls being called both ways. Both post players got in a lot of foul trouble.

KIM MULKEY: Yeah. It's basketball. I thought the officiating was fine.

Q. The Washington Post story about you published today. Have you had a chance to see it, and do you have any comment on it?

KIM MULKEY: No. When did it publish?

Q. A couple hours before the game.

KIM MULKEY: Imagine that. Must have thought y'all would look at it, get some clicks or be a distraction. No, ma'am, I haven't read it and I probably won't read it. I probably will have my attorneys communicate with me to see if there's anything in there that we need to be concerned about.

Q. Kim, your players kind of said it; they've kind of embraced this us-against-the-world mentality. Is that something you've embraced, as well? Do you tell them to enjoy having the black hat on, enjoy being who you are? What is your message to them in terms of that us-against-the-world thing?

KIM MULKEY: How many of you in here are mothers? Raise your hand if you're a mother. How many of you in here are grandmothers. Damn, I'm the only one.

I hope this kind of answers your question.

These young ladies -- I saw an article -- I didn't see it, someone sent it to me. It was a commentary from the LA Times. I'm not sure if that young man is in here.

You can criticize coaches all you want. That's our business. You can come at us and say you're the worst coach in America. I hate you, I hate everything about you. We expect that. It comes with the territory.

But the one thing I'm not going to let you do, I'm not going to let you attack young people, and there were some things in this commentary, guys, that you should be offended by as women. It was so sexist, and they don't even know it.

It was good versus evil in that game today. Evil? Called us dirty debutants? Take your phone out right now and Google dirty debutants and tell me what it says. Dirty debutants? Are you kidding me?

I'm not going to let you talk about 18 to 21 year old kids in that tone. It was even sexist for this reporter to say UCLA was milk and cookies.

Now, you women sit there and you keep your mouths shut if you want. I'm in the last third of my career, but I'm not going to let sexism continue. And if you don't think that's sexism, then you're in denial.

How dare people attack kids like that. You don't have to like the way we play. You don't have to like the way we trash talk. You don't have to like any of that. We're good with that.

But I can't sit up here as a mother and a grandmother and a leader of young people and allow somebody to say that.

Ms. Armor, I think you asked me the other day and I cut you off, didn't I? Maybe that's your story to write. Didn't you ask me something about a man and I cut you off? Think about what I'm saying, okay?

Because guys, that's wrong. I don't even know what dirty debutants are, but I know when I Googled it, I went (gasps). Growing the game was a part of it. How many of you have been to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, raise your hand, and seen our games? How many of you have been to an SEC game when you played on the road?

You want to talk about growing the game? Go see our crowds, people.

I don't get that. I'm sorry. I come from a different generation. I get it. But I know sexism when I see it and I read it. That was awful.

So I hope I've answered your question. We just play hard. We play competitive. It doesn't matter if it's my son out there. It doesn't matter if it was anybody's brothers out there. We're out there to kick your rear end, and that's how they play. It's how I was taught by the greatest in this business. Look at the people I played for. They're Hall-of-Famers, legendary coaches. They probably couldn't coach in this generation.

But that's who I learned from.

I'm done.

Q. Do you have any plans tomorrow either personally or with the team to celebrate the Easter holiday?

KIM MULKEY: Absolutely. Absolutely. Every Sunday if it wasn't Easter, we have devotion. We have devotion as a team. Every morning and every noon and every dinner meal, each kid is asked to pray, and we don't have a roomful of Baptists, Methodists -- we have Muslims, we have Jewish kids, we have all walks of life, and we respect whatever prayer they want to say.

To answer your questions, you'd better believe that we will do that. Thank you for asking that.

Q. You've always said from day one when UConn was running the show, you hadn't made it clear, and now you saw what's happening now. In this tournament everybody thinks the team out there playing now, everybody thinks they can win it. Of course you guys with being champs, there's a variety of teams -- what are you telling your team or what are you saying to your team to make sure the other teams -- this isn't always guaranteed? What are you telling them that's helping them keep this run going?

KIM MULKEY: I'm just me. I'm real. They feel me. I say things in that locker room that if you were just on the outside and you heard, you would go (gasps), but they love it. They feel my energy. They feel my warmth. They feel my realness, and I'll do the same thing in preparation for this next game.

All I want those young ladies to do, all of them, I want them to graduate, and I want them to go in this real world and kick ass. If I can prepare them for that through the good, the bad, the ugly, the ups, the downs, you learn everything about the world through sports.

That's all I care. That's all I care about.

Q. Kim, regarding the game, what did you see from your team as UCLA was making its run and obviously came back from the deficit, first off? Then why do you feel like they responded, particularly Flau'jae, the way they did to get you guys the win?

KIM MULKEY: We extended the lead a couple times; we just couldn't get over that hump. We should have gone in at halftime with a 10-point lead and we gave up a three.

Then we took another lead. I'm not sure if it went up to eight or nine or whatever it was, and then they would chip away at it. So you're continually telling them the little things you have to do to win this ballgame.

I thought Aalyah Del Rosario was big for us tonight. She has the size and the height to compete in there with Betts, especially when Angel got in foul trouble. I thought that Morrow took over a little bit offensively when we got really, really tired. We got tired.

I just thought a lot of individual players did a lot of little things to help us just keep playing the game. One of the ways I've always thought that we can win a lot of games is we get to the foul line, and we did that again tonight. I can't remember did we shoot 20 something, 30, I don't know what it was, but get to the foul line, attack.

You can't be afraid of height. She's going to block your shots. Just take it in there and keep going at them. Run the floor. We didn't get enough run-outs and enough transition buckets, but we got just enough at the right time.