DALLAS — As women look for equality in both sports and throughout American, to reach that point when they are treated the same as their male counterparts, look at The Outfit.
Kim Mulkey may be a royal, purple-and-gold, such-and-such, the woman can pretty much do, say (and wear) whatever the she wants.
The former Baylor women’s basketball coach may be the only woman’s coach in America who enjoys such freedoms, or allowances. She must have grasped from an early age that winning covers nearly all of the sins we call important, but are usually negotiable.
Especially in sports, because there is no greater counter to any behavior than, “Yeah ... but he wins.”
It’s usually a “He.” Seldom is it “She.”
Mulkey is the exception, even if she should be the rule.
On Sunday at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, there was LSU’s second-year coach doing, saying, and wearing whatever she wanted. In a national title game.
Stomping on the court. Berating officials. Bullying whomever necessary. All while wearing an outfit that looks like it was stolen from Taylor Swift’s dressing room at AT&T Stadium.
Doing everything that she did in her long, title-winning career at Baylor.
With tennis icon and American legend Billie Jean King in attendance, Mulkey’s LSU Tigers easily defeated Iowa, 102-85 for the NCAA title.
This was basically the woman’s basketball equivalent of the college football national title game between Georgia and TCU.
The only drama in the fourth quarter was whether Iowa could keep LSU from hitting 100. Didn’t happen. In the final seconds LSU banked in a 3-pointer to eclipse 100.
As those final seconds ticked down, there was Mulkey awash in her own tears, mugged by her coaching staff to celebrate.
Despite the presence, and draw, of national player of the year, Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, this game was mostly a snore. Because Mulkey has the better team. Because one good team normally beats one great player.
It didn’t help that the referees were a whistle happy in the first half; Clark was hit with her third foul in the second quarter. That third foul changed her game.
She was handed a technical foul with one minute remaining in the third quarter, which was her fourth foul and basically ended any chance of Iowa coming back from a 17-point halftime deficit.
The refs didn’t beat Iowa. Even had Clark gone off for 50 points, which is she capable, Iowa wasn’t going to win this game.
Usually the team that pulls off the monster upset in the national semifinals, as Iowa did on Friday night against undefeated South Carolina, has nothing left for the title game.
Iowa didn’t have much left. And LSU is a lot better than Iowa.
LSU did this in just Mulkey’s second season since she left Baylor. That’s going to leave some kind of mark all over the Baylor administration.
This is also what Kim Mulkey does, and why she is one of the greatest coaches in the history of the sport. She has now up to four national titles. Three with Baylor. One with LSU. It would be stupid money to bet against Kim Mulkey.
She belongs in the same conversation along with Tennessee’s Pat Summitt, UConn’s Geno Auriemma, Vivian Stringer and a few others.
She knows it, too. She built a dynasty in Waco, and she will do the same thing in Baton Rouge.
“Year 2 at LSU ... hosting this trophy is crazy,” Mulkey said on the court during the trophy presentation. “Party in Louisiana.”
Say whatever you will about her, and there is a lot to be said and written about her. Some (a lot?) of it not good.
She’s also a great coach in a savage profession. Her teams win national titles.
That’s why she can get away with some of the words that come out of her mouth. That’s why she can do some of the things that she does.
Her male counterparts all over the college, professional, ranks got away with the same behaviors for decades, and people put up with it. Almost come to expect it.
Ask Billie Jean King about this.
They get away with it because ... “He wins.”
Add Kim Mulkey to this sentence because, “She wins.”
