DALLAS — Since 2000, when Kim Mulkey first became head coach, she has slept by her bed with a small legal pad and pen. In the middle of the night when an idea occurs to her, she turns around and, without turning on the light, writes down what woke her up – she wants to try a new out-of-bounds game, which she should report to the janitors about the mops, her roof really needs to be cleaned.
“I’m afraid if I sleep on it,” she says, “I’ll wake up and forget it.”
In the morning, she turns to check her list and texts — the first task of the day — to the appropriate parties to make sure everything gets done.
But in recent years, hotels have stopped providing rooms with notepads and pens (a problem Mulkey doesn’t excite), and since she doesn’t feel like traveling with her own, she just uses her phone and texts the night away in the middle.
On Saturday night, on the eve of the national title game, she sent a few text messages to her coach’s group chat: Tell me to see Sa’Myah Smith so I can remind her that they’re going to be very impactful in this game can. A few hours later I have to remind you all to look at the 3-2 and extend it if we can’t guard them.
The “she” in question was Caitlin Clark, the International of the Year and the guard whose 3-point range this season has had every opponent bucking in one way or another. Clark and her Hawkeyes were the favorites to take home the national title after beating top seed South Carolina in the Final Four. They were something of a destiny team, with Clark being the player whose reach — basically anything that matters on a basketball court — had caught America’s attention.
Here’s the thing: LSU might be guarding them. Almost better than any other team this season. And not just with a zone defense.
But then the Tigers went and did even better: They completely stole the Hawkeyes’ MO, got Clark-like heat from range and did what everyone – even themselves at one point in the season – thought was impossible. They won the national title in a year they didn’t even win the SEC title.
Mulkey had dampened high expectations for months. They won too much and too fast, she said; it wasn’t sustainable. She’d said they’d put up more banners in Baton Rouge, but she didn’t mean it right away.
“I kept trying to tame that monster,” Mulkey said. “I said, ‘Maybe we’re feeding this monster too soon.'”
At every opportunity, she lavished praise on South Carolina, the team everyone expected to lift the trophy at the end of the season. And as the season progressed and South Carolina and LSU often existed as the only two SEC teams in the top 25, it became easier to believe that perhaps this team was more show than substance.
But the monster kept going. LSU kept winning.
When Mulkey came to LSU ahead of the 2021-22 season, she came into Year 1 with a simple goal for the team: Win more games than the previous season (nine). The Tigers did that in 11 games.
So the goal was: win enough games (16) to finish with a winning record. It took 18 games to do that.
At the end of last season, the Tigers finished one place behind the Gamecocks, who went on to win the national title. They celebrated second place.
During the offseason, even as LSU added players who exuded national championship potential—namely Angel Reese and Flau’jae Johnson—the Tigers were still talking about just that: their potential. A national title was the goal, but not now. Soon, but not now. Because even the most confident players understand that goals should still be rooted in reality.
“I didn’t think I would win a national championship my freshman year at LSU,” Reese said.
And it wasn’t just Mulkey’s second season. Because she had won quickly before. At Baylor, it took her and her staff five years to lead the bears from the middle of the Big 12 to a national title.
There was skepticism because how could this be the team that would bring LSU their first national title? This is the program that Sylvia Fowles and Seimone Augustus had. This was a program that went to five straight Final Fours and never figured out how to get over the hump. How could a team with a second-year coach and an all-new roster assembled from the transfer portal and newcomers become not just elite, but the only team strong enough to end the season with a win?
Because LSU had nine new players and only one major holdover from the previous year: fifth-year Alexis Morris, who played with the momentum that could lift or sink a team above their ceiling if they weren’t careful. At the beginning of the season, she still hadn’t figured out how to use this superpower.
The theme of the tigers in the new look quickly became “putting the parts together”. And throughout the season they referred to it constantly.
As the exercises began, so did the trash-talking. The trainers warned that it might get a little too hot. Maybe they should cool down, take a hit. But the players pushed back – it was they who put the pieces together; trust them it was part of their process. So the trainers gave in and left them alone.
In November and December, players drew foul after foul but couldn’t shoot better than 60 percent from the free-throw line. Reese comforted Mulkey. Don’t worry, Reese said, we’ll beat them when it counts. The parts will come together.
And as Jasmine Carson hit waves of cold that shot from the touchline, players and coaches reminded her to stay the course. She was still LSU’s top outside threat, and the shooters had to keep firing. The Tigers needed them to keep shooting. Because without them the team would not be complete.
But even when all those pieces were together, no one expected this to be the final image.
However, the monster went on. In March, LSU was looking better and better. When Reese almost passed the entire Michigan team in the second round, the coaches figured the Tigers could make their move. With Ladazhia Williams dropping 24 points in the Sweet 16 while three other starters were out, there was a stronger belief that this could be a squad where every night could be someone else’s night. Then they bought their ticket to Dallas by stopping Miami, which had become the hottest postseason team.
When LSU landed in Dallas, the coaches looked around and thought, “We haven’t played our best 40 minutes. Could it happen in the next two games?”
Mulkey’s midnight and 3 a.m. texts arrived. Game planning questions for Virginia Tech and then Iowa. thoughts on encounters. memories of conversations.
And as the LSU players took to the floor at American Airlines Center on Sunday afternoon, Mulkey saw the picture begin to come together. It looked like the team she coached this season and also a far better version of the team she coached this season.
Johnson sunk a corner 3 in less than a minute into the game, a precursor to the eight others to come in the first half and two more in the second half, nearly surpassing LSU’s tournament total by 3 seconds in the title game alone. Morris’ momentum spilled over to her teammates; she held them down as the Hawkeyes hit runs. And Carson put together the game of her life as she racked up 22 points. Each player played her role, added her character and did nothing more.
You can’t plan against that kind of momentum, can’t push back when a team seems destined to take hold. In the second half, LSU felt the national championship was within reach if this monster could just hold together a little longer.
“All season we’ve been trying to figure out how to put that together,” Reese said. “We have a lot of great personalities on the team. We go into that all the time. But at the end of the day we love each other and we are sisters. We are now where we wanted to be.”
This is not where the Tigers saw each other, not where Mulkey would have predicted this team would be in April. Not last fall. Not even last month.
But one by one everyone took their turn and climbed up the ladder to cut the nets. The players turned to the cameras and smiled before climbing back down and clutching the piece of this impossible season that will be theirs forever.
(Photo: Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)