By ANDRE CHAMPAGNE, Tiger Rag Staff Reporter
LSU women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey was not with her team over the past week due to a family emergency.
She did not travel back with the Tigers to Baton Rouge following the Tigers’ 91-72 win at No. 16 Oklahoma on Sunday. Instead, Mulkey went to Temple, Texas, because her 7-year-old grandson, Kannon Fuller, was hospitalized with a ruptured appendix.
Associate head coach and veteran Southeastern Conference assistant coach Bob Starkey took over, and Mulkey had no doubt her team would be ready for Texas A&M on the road Thursday night as Kannon improved. The No. 6 Tigers won, 98-54, to get to 18-2 overall and 4-2 in the SEC as the Aggies fell to 8-7 and 1-5.
“He has extended my career,” Mulkey, 63, said. “He talks my language. We teach the same way, so it doesn’t matter,” Mulkey said after the win. “I would do it with any team I’m with – take yourself away from the team for four days. My family comes first, but I never doubted that he would have our team ready to play.”
It’s not the first time Starkey, 66, has taken over for Mulkey. Last season, he coached the Tigers in the SEC Tournament quarterfinals against Florida while Mulkey grieved a family member’s death. LSU won, 101-87. In the 2006-07 season when coach Pokey Chatman was forced to resign just before the NCAA Tournament because of inappropriate behavior, Starkey took over and led LSU to the Final Four.
A former LSU men’s basketball assistant coach under Dale Brown from 1990-96, Starkey was an LSU women’s assistant and associate coach from 1998-2011. After assistant coaching stints at Central Florida, Texas A&M and Auburn, Starkey returned to LSU when Mulkey hired him before the 2022-23 season.
Mulkey may have been gone, but preparations for the Aggies changed little.
“Our goal was the same, and we all came into practice each and every day just wanting to get better,” junior guard MiLaysia Fulwiley said. “Bob emphasized that we got to get better, and we can’t overlook this team. We had to go out there and play harder, play stronger and just want it more. And this whole week during practice, everybody was on the same page, and we tried to get better each day.”
Starkey’s preparation paid off. The Tigers showed no signs of a hangover from their win over Oklahoma with their most dominant SEC win over the season at College Station Thursday.
“He (Starkey) put in a couple of inbounds plays, and I was like, ‘I like that,’” Mulkey said. “I don’t know if Bob did it or coach Kaylin (Rice), who does a lot of the inbounds plays. But I looked at him and said, ‘Ooh, I kind of like that.’ I have no hesitation when something unexpected happens, like it happened after the Oklahoma game, to go and be with my family. But who makes it really work are those kids – my players. And I told them what was going on and hugged every one of them and told them if things go accordingly, I’ll see them at A&M. And it did.”
LSU next plays Florida (13-8, 1-5 SEC) at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center on Monday (7 p.m., SEC Network).
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