BATON ROUGE — How Kim Mulkey has been coaching in women’s college basketball for as long as she has isn’t by accident and luck of the draw.
At 62, the Tangipahoa Parish native struts into her 40th season in the coaching profession, this year marking her fourth heading up the LSU women’s basketball program.
Playing under legendary Louisiana Tech head coach Leon Barmore, where she won two national championships as a player before getting start in coaching under her coach at her alma mater prior to the 1985-86 season, Mulkey has stood the test of time in a sport that’s undergone myriad of changes.
Others in her generation have stepped away from the game, while Mulkey took the practice floor with the 2024-25 version of the Tigers in pursuit of another NCAA championship.
“I just have a lot of energy,” Mulkey said. “I think if you have the energy, you’re putting a product on the floor that is competitive and your is health is good? What else am I gonna do in life? I can only hang around my grandchildren for so long, they still have to go to school.
OBSERVATIONS FROM LSU WBB’S PRACTICE Observations for LSU women’s basketball first practice. Here’s what stood out
LSU FACING PERSONALITY VOID? Does LSU women’s basketball have a prominent personality like Angel Reese? Does it matter?
“It’s fun for me to be challenged. It’s fun for me to get up every day and still feel like I’m contributing something to this game.”
Mulkey has certainly left her stamp on women’s college basketball. She’s put together one of the most impressive résumés of any basketball coach on any level, men or women.
As head coach, which she got her first chance at Baylor in 2000, she’s guided all but one of her teams to the NCAA Tournament — which includes 17 straight appearances as a coach. Her squads have won at least 21 games every season, 24 consecutive 20-plus win campaigns.
A true mark of her longevity has been leading teams to national championships, which she’s done four times, the first back in 2004-05 at Baylor in her fifth season as head coach and the most recent at LSU in 2022-23, her second year in Baton Rouge. What sticks out is she’s won titles in three different decades. And she’s won in different iterations of women’s basketball.
The most notable changes to collegiate athletics have recently happened with the addition of the transfer portal and student-athletes abilities to make money off Name, Image and Likeness deals. In many instances, recruits have used NIL as a negotiating mechanism for their recruitment and where they ultimately end up.
Mulkey deserves plenty of credit for how she handled those changes as she quickly appointed longtime assistant Jennifer Roberts to a new role in director of player personnel and influence when the NIL took effect a few years back. She’s also had staffers and coaches take many of the other responsibilities on navigating the new collegiate athletics landscape.
She attributes her staying power to those adjustments.
“The hard part is things changing in collegiate athletics. I feel like I’m probably one of the old dinosaurs that’s been able to adapt. Some (coaches) in my age group have gotten out because it’s like, ‘Well, I’m not putting up with that anymore,'” Mulkey said.
“I’ve been able to adapt without changing my philosophies on the floor with discipline, with defense, with rebounds and those things. It’s still college sports. All of those other outside stuff honestly I don’t deal with it, I give it to an assistant or an administrator and they allow me to just be a coach.”
Mulkey has embraced innovation and how she has structured things at LSU may very well likely be the way coaching staffs and teams are put together across women’s basketball moving forward.
LSU WBB RECRUITING How LSU women’s basketball 5-star commit Divine Bourrage fits in Kim Mulkey’s 2025 squad
LSU WBB 2024-25 SCHEDULE Analyzing LSU women’s basketball 2024-25 schedule. Nonconference strength, hardest stretch
Cory Diaz covers the LSU Tigers for The Daily Advertiser as part of the USA TODAY Network. Follow his Tigers coverage on Twitter: @ByCoryDiaz. Got questions regarding LSU athletics? Send them to Cory Diaz at bdiaz@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Lafayette Daily Advertiser: Kim Mulkey enters Year 40 in coaching. Here’s how she’s done it
