Kim Mulkey held her hands up, her palms facing the crowd in front of her. The start of the LSU women’s basketball season was three weeks away, and the Pete Maravich Assembly Center looked different.
Instead of a scorer’s table, there was a stage, a podium and a tall black curtain. And in place of a court, there were tables and chairs, where fans and members of the team’s booster club sat and watched Mulkey — wearing a pink sequined Tiger on a black T-shirt — speak for nearly an hour.
The subject of the Hall of Fame coach’s address was the revamped LSU roster. She had seven returners and six newcomers, all of whom joined Mulkey onstage as she shared a short anecdote about each of them.
When Mulkey reintroduced Angel Reese, the All-American forward and the Final Four Most Outstanding Player, she hearkened back to the immediate aftermath of the 2023 national championship game when Reese was impassioned during the news conference in the face of criticism — for how she talked trash, pointed to her ring finger and aimed taunts at Iowa guard Caitlin Clark.
Reese, standing behind Mulkey’s right shoulder, flashed a sheepish grin.
“For all of you who love this team and love Angel Reese,” Mulkey said, “you defend Angel Reese because she’s ours.”
That was Oct. 17. Exactly a month later, Mulkey struck a similar tone when addressing the dominant topic of the LSU women’s unexpectedly bumpy nonconference slate of games. From Nov. 17-25, Reese missed four games for reasons Mulkey declined to share.
Her absence was just one of several hurdles the Tigers had to clear across the first 14 contests. In Las Vegas, Colorado handed them a surprising 92-78 loss. On the Cayman Islands, they lost sophomore forward Sa’Myah Smith to a season-ending knee injury. And on Dec. 10, Mulkey announced that Kateri Poole — a key contributor on last year’s title squad — was no longer on the team.
But LSU still won all but one of its nonconference games, beat a top-10 Virginia Tech team and is No. 7 in the AP Poll as it begins Southeastern Conference play at 8 p.m. Thursday against Missouri in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
To open the conference slate, Mulkey is expected to trot out her preferred starting lineup — Hailey Van Lith, Flau’jae Johnson, Mikaylah Williams, Aneesah Morrow and Reese — for only the fourth time this season.
The group is arguably the most talented starting five in the country, but it rarely has played together.
“Is it the perfect scenario to start conference (play)? No,” Mulkey said. “But it is what we’ve had to deal with, and I just see every day in practice us getting a little bit better.”
LSU coach Kim Mulkey watches her team during the first half against Colorado, Monday Nov. 6, 2023, in Las Vegas. Colorado beat LSU 92-78.
'Hope they got good paint on those walls'
It was easy for Mulkey and her LSU team to leave their season-opening loss to Colorado behind. All they needed was a charter plane, one that could lift them high atop the bright, gaudy Las Vegas lights and jet them back to Baton Rouge.
It was much harder to shake feelings the loss exposed. There was doubt. There was a tinge of regret. And there was even some fear, said a program source, of how the revamped team — after a few difficult practices and one disappointing game — had flunked its first major test of the season.
The problem was the Tigers' effort, which Mulkey decried after the game. On the flight, she received a reassuring pat on the back from her son, Kramer Robertson, who could sense her frustration.
“It never stops for you,” he told her.
At cruising altitude, Mulkey was wondering whether she should have scheduled that game. Maybe, she thought, it was too tough of a test too early in the season to give a team with three new starters, even one that opened the year as the preseason No. 1. Colorado’s returning starters were simply more cohesive with advantages in size, speed and shooting.
Those discrepancies were in full view in what a pair of sources described as a tearful, brutally honest film session on Nov. 8, two days after LSU’s loss to Colorado and one day before its banner unveiling, ring ceremony and home opener.
“That new locker room, film room,” Mulkey said that day, “I hope they got some good paint on those walls.”
The coaches and players then carried that intensity onto the court at practice, which Mulkey left early and put associate coach Bob Starkey in charge of the rest of the session.
Per a source, it’s not the first time Mulkey has used a similar motivational tactic at LSU.
“That man, he's gonna extend my career is what he's gonna do,” Mulkey said on Nov. 9, a day after the practice. “Because he says things the way I say it, he's intense like I am, and in moments like yesterday, he needed to step up and help me, and he just takes right over for me.”
LSU head coach Kim Mulkey speaks with LSU forward Angel Reese (10) near the bench against Virginia Tech, Thursday, November 30, 2023, at the LSU PMAC in Baton Rouge, La.
'Let's have some fun here'
Reese tucked her phone into the waistband of her shorts, hiding the pink Bayou Barbie sticker she had stuck to its back. Then, she plopped down behind a microphone for a news conference after LSU’s 82-64 win over Virginia Tech, when she spoke publicly for the first time in three weeks.
The star forward, wearing a damp purple T-shirt that commemorated Mulkey’s 700th career win, greeted the assembled media as she scooted her chair forward and folded her hands on the table. It was her first game after the four-game absence.
“How happy are y’all to see me? I know y’all are,” Reese said. “Here we go, let’s have some fun here.”
While Reese was away from the team, Mulkey parried questions about her whereabouts, repeating only that she hoped to see her back with the Tigers sooner rather than later. At one point, she alluded to vague “locker room issues,” but promised not to divulge any details to "protect” her players, as if they were her own children.
“I’m waiting for y’all to get past it,” Mulkey said. “We’re past it. We were past it after it happened, really. It’s just we have to come in here and answer questions, and that becomes aggravating.”
On the court, Reese gave LSU 19 points and nine rebounds in her return against Virginia Tech. In the next four games, some of her overall numbers were significantly better than the ones she posted prior to her absence.
Her scoring average jumped by more than five points a game. Her field goal percentage skyrocketed, from 46.9% in her first four games to 65.4% over her next five. And her free-throw attempts per game almost doubled.
She shared a long embrace with Mulkey on the PMAC court after the Virginia Tech game. Then, in the locker room, the team celebrated win No. 700 for Mulkey by dousing her with water.
Reese grabbed the back of her coach’s wet, matted hair and jumped up and down, before bending her knees, wrapping her arms around Mulkey and lifting her off the ground.
Mulkey grabbed a towel. And then, the two left the locker room for the postgame news conference, where the coach sat to Reese’s left, buttoned her white, feathery jacket and listened to her star forward field questions, just like she did eight months prior after the national championship game.
“I’m back, and I’m happy, and I’m here, and I’m moving forward,” Reese said, “and I’m gonna help take this team as far as I can.”
The answer to how far begins in earnest Thursday.