Final season when LSU beat Iowa for the NCAA title, Kim Mulkey turned the primary coach within the girls’s recreation 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.
This is what to know in regards to 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 response to USA TODAY’s evaluation 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 mentioned 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 mentioned. “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 just wish to rent me and my employees with the understanding that we’re not taking a pay minimize?’ ”
How outdated is Kim Mulkey?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 informed a sportswriter that “it was nonetheless an important feeling.” She received a nationwide championship with Louisiana Tech and a gold medal on Pat Summitt’s 1984 Olympic staff.
Mulkey and her penchant for over-the-top outfits on recreation day
From butterflies to rhinestones to feathers, Mulkey turns heads on recreation 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 truthfully, I do not know something about basketball, however I’ll come simply to see what you put on,’ ” Mulkey mentioned final 12 months on the Closing 4. “Effectively, 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 be taught the sport of basketball.
“Those who come due to basketball, neglect what I put on on the sideline, have 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 completed X’s and O’s-wise as a coach,” she mentioned. “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 recreation, so be it.”
Contributing: Nancy Armour, Lindsay Schnell, Blake Toppmeyer