Unfortunately, I’ve been thinking a lot about Kim Mulkey this week. Her 3-seeded LSU Tigers did a great job! mega! last night belonged to Ohio State in the second round, losing 79-64 in Baton Rouge. Sometimes she went so far on the court that she practically installed the screens herself. She will not compete in Sweet Sixteen for the first time since 2008. Neither Malki nor her former employer have the opportunity to gloat; also missing is the program with which she performed in all these performances. In Sunday’s second round game, the revamped Baylor Bears taught a nightmarish lesson in how to lose a basketball game. (Step One: Flip the ball 10 times in the first quarter. Step Two: Enter the second quarter with a score of 16-4. Step Three: Don’t take advantage of the opponent’s prolonged drought in the fourth quarter. Step Four: Play final minutes of tournament play on elimination as if you were saving your energy for a fifth quarter that the rest of us don’t know about.Congratulations!South Dakota upset you.)
Both losses mark disappointing endings to otherwise promising seasons for programs. When Mulkey left Baylor for LSU over the summer, her replacement Nicky Collen, hired from the Atlanta Dream, spent little time fiddling with the team’s identity. Her Baylor team played with an open, more varied offense, an aesthetic upgrade from the paint-hammering Baylors of the past. According to Her Hoops statistics, the team has scored 26 percent of three points this year, compared to 13 percent under Mulkey last season. The results, too, were clear: Baylor won the Big 12 title in the regular season, and he did so with just seven players on a rotation. (Collen was a little taken aback that the former regime relied on high-profile transfers.) Lissa Smith, who was likely drafted in the WNBA lottery, in particular, thrived under a coach with a remote interest in developing the team’s backcourt. It was great to watch Collen take someone else’s list, and given that someone else’s very specific system, and do what he can with it.
It was kind of weird too. While there was something weird about losing to Baylor in the second round, there was something even weirder about the way Baylor lost to South Dakota, depending on three balls that just didn’t work for them that night and forgoing rebounds in protection. down the stretch. Collen’s post-loss press conference quote made me laugh – it was so unlike the Baylor I was used to: “I think they were physical tonight. They were very, very physical. We’re quite skilled.” This does not mean that the team that Malki coaches would have won; she owns her fair share of tournament embarrassment. But I’m not sure she could ever be accused of being overly sophisticated.
This year at LSU, Mulkey undertook a similar challenge, bringing her own system to a roster that was a bit smaller to handle and trying to reclaim glory for a program that had fallen out of favor with the school’s boosters. The results certainly exceeded expectations: what was 9-13 last year is now 26-6 this year, thanks to the strong performance of the team’s senior players and Malka’s transfers. In today’s The Athletic column, Mulkey raised $1.3 million for the program in her first 10 days on the job, and that as she headed to yesterday’s game, she received “a standing ovation that even Les Miles or Ed Orgeron hasn’t seen.” could get at the height of their popularity in Baton Rouge.”
With both LSU and Baylor, the regular season provides grounds for optimism, though Mulkey would be the first to temper those expectations. “I see it in college football,” she said at a press conference last month. “You’ll see these kids win an exciting bowl game and they’ll go, ‘We baaaak!’ and next year they’ll get their asses kicked. You won’t come back until you’ve done it at a high level for a certain period of time.”
Perhaps one day Mulka’s war will be decided on the basketball court, when both coaches finally arm themselves with “their” players. But I prefer to imagine these programs and fan bases forever doomed to the same unsatisfactory end, with destinies intertwined, unable to prevail over others.