Meet Kim Mulkey: The brilliant and controversial basketball coach who led LSU to its first national championship

The Hall of Fame head coach led the LSU Tigers to their first-ever basketball national championship — on either the men's or women's side — in just her second year at the helm in Baton Rouge. With LSU's 102-85 win over National Player of the Year Caitlin Clark and her Iowa Hawkeyes, Mulkey collected the fourth ring of her illustrious coaching career after having won three national titles as coach of the Baylor Bears.

The Tickfaw, Louisiana, native's homecoming success story should be a feel-good tale all fans could enjoy. But Mulkey's history has instead made her one of the most controversial faces of the game.

Here's a timeline of Mulkey's rise to basketball glory — and the various incidents that have happened alongside her successes:

While growing up in Tickfaw, Louisiana — a rural community 50 miles northwest of New Orleans — Mulkey excelled in sports despite competing almost exclusively against boys. She was a star in both baseball and basketball, according to her bio on Baylor's website, but decided to focus on the latter as she moved into middle and high school.

Mulkey hardly lost at the collegiate level, either. The 5-foot-4 All-American point guard led the Lady Techsters to back-to-back national titles in 1981 and 1982, while advancing to the Final Four every year of her collegiate career and posting a spectacular 130-6 overall record.

Not long after her collegiate basketball career came to a close, Mulkey joined Team USA at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. She contributed 5.3 points per game through the United States' undefeated run to the gold medal and, together with her teammates, helped morph USA Basketball into the perennial powerhouse it is today.

For the 15 years she patrolled the sidelines at Louisiana Tech as an assistant coach and, later, an associate head coach, Mulkey helped guide her squad to a 430-68 record, seven Final Four appearances, and yet another national championship.

When she arrived in Waco, Texas, Mulkey inherited a Baylor team that had won just seven games and finished dead last in the Big 12 conference. But in the very first year she started calling the shots, Mulkey led the Bears to a remarkable 21-9 record and their first-ever NCAA tournament bid.

From that point forward, Baylor women's basketball only failed to make the Big Dance once — and never did she lead the team to anything less than a 24-win season, per Sports Reference.

It didn't take Mulkey long to become a regular in the NCAA tournament. And by her fifth season at the helm, she had a squad capable of competing for a national championship.

Baylor went 33-3 during the 2004-05 season and won its first Big 12 regular season and tournament championships before earning an invitation to March Madness. Mulkey's squad — led by future WNBA player Sophia Young — advanced to its first-ever Final Four, where the Bears took down Player of the Year Seimone Augustus and her top-seeded LSU Tigers to reach the title game.

Baylor kept its foot on the pedal from there, with the team beating the Michigan State Spartans 84-62 to clinch their first national title.

Mulkey's Bears were permanent fixtures in the NCAA tournament after winning the title in 2005, but the program reached new heights when it welcomed a 6-foot-5 top-ranked recruit by the name of Brittney Griner. The Houston native grew four more inches over her four years at Baylor, and was an absolute force for Mulkey's squad from the moment she stepped foot on the court in 2009.

In her freshman year, Griner recorded 18.4 points, 8.5 rebounds, and 6.4 blocks per game and led the Bears to the Final Four. By her junior year, the superstar center had the entire nation's attention as she led Baylor to a championship and earned Player of the Year honors.

But Mulkey and Griner had an up-and-down relationship throughout their time together in Waco, and their feuds became public shortly after the star left the Bears to become the No. 1 WNBA Draft pick.

In a bombshell report published in 2013 — shortly after the Phoenix Mercury drafted Griner — then-ESPN writer Kate Fagan detailed how Mulkey urged Griner to stay quiet about her sexuality during her four-year career at Baylor.

After committing to join the Bears, Griner came out to Mulkey and asked if her sexuality would put her scholarship at risk. Mulkey assured her that it would not, Griner told Fagan, but once the future superstar arrived on campus, she quickly understood that she would not be permitted to publicize any of her relationships.

"It was a recruiting thing," Griner told Fagan. "The coaches thought if it seemed like they condoned it, people wouldn't let their kids play for Baylor."

Griner later elaborated on her experience hiding her sexuality throughout college in her autobiography, "In My Skin: My Life On and Off the Basketball Court." She didn't know that, at the time, Baylor University's student misconduct policy specifically forbade "homosexual acts."

Still, Mulkey did not help her star cope with the realities of life as a gay student on Baylor's campus, Griner wrote in "In My Skin." Instead, she enacted a makeshift "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.

Later, Fagan revealed that Mulkey threatened to get her fired from her job at ESPN for running the initial story about Griner's experience.

Mulkey's program thrived in the years following Griner's departure, but outside of the gym, a storm was brewing on Baylor's campus. By 2016, a massive scandal spread across the nation when news broke that the university had suppressed dozens of reports of sexual misconduct — mostly accusing players on the football team of rape or assault — over the course of years.

In 2017, as investigations into the school and its athletics department were ongoing, Mulkey announced into a microphone that "If somebody's around you and they ever say, 'I will never send my daughter to Baylor,' you knock them right in the face."

"I work here every day. I'm in the know. And I'm tired of hearing it," Mulkey added in a press conference later. "The problems that we have at Baylor are no different than the problems at any other school in America. Period. Move on. Find another story to write."

Mulkey's program continued to excel during and after the crisis. The Bears finished atop the Big 12 in 11 consecutive seasons and, in 2019, Mulkey secured her third national championship with stars like Kalani Brown, Chloe Jackson, Lauren Cox, NaLyssa Smith, DiDi Richards, and Queen Egbo on her roster.

This title put her squarely in the company of women's college basketball's elite coaches. With the win, Mulkey became the third coach in Division-I history to win at least three titles, joining UConn's Geno Auriemma and late Tennessee coach Pat Summitt.

Though championship teams traditionally visit the White House following their big wins, many college, professional, and even national teams skipped their meet-and-greets with then-President Donald Trump. Some opted out in protest of the Trump administration's controversial policies, while others — including many of the women's teams — simply never received an invitation in the first place.

Mulkey, however, answered Trump's call on behalf of the Bears. She and her Baylor players became the first women's team to visit Trump in the White House on its own (several women's teams visited the Trump White House at the same time in 2017 when he honored the championships of some nonrevenue sports, such as soccer and rowing).

"It's not a political issue for me. It's an honor to go to the White House," Mulkey said, per Yahoo! Sports.

"We were honored when President Bush was in the office. We were honored when Barack Obama was in the office. We'd be honored if Donald Trump invited us," she added. "With politics aside, we should go to say we went to the White House."

The previous two women's national champions — South Carolina and Notre Dame — did not head to Washington, DC following their victories. The WNBA's Minnesota Lynx did not receive an invitation in 2017, and the following year, the champion Seattle Storm made it clear they would not accept even if they were invited.

Mulkey had risen to the highest mountaintops of basketball as a player and a coach, but her 2020 induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame cemented her legacy. With none other than Michael Jordan presenting her honor, Mulkey officially etched her name among basketball's greats.

After 21 years, seven Big 12 Coach of the Year awards, a dozen Big 12 regular-season titles, and three national championships in Waco, Mulkey parted ways with the program she built from scratch to take on a new challenge in the SEC. And true to form, the polarizing play-caller started her LSU Tigers tenure off with a bang.

At the beginning of her introductory press conference, Mulkey walked up to the podium while wearing an LSU-branded face mask, bantered with the fans in attendance, then dramatically flung her "damn mask" off the stage because "I have a lot to say."

During that very same press conference, Mulkey looked into the rafters at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center and noted that none of the banners "say national champion."

"That's what I came here to do," she declared.

Griner was taken into Russian custody in March 2022 for traveling into the country with hashish oil in her luggage. Later that spring, the US government deemed the perennial WNBA All-Star wrongfully detained. And by the end of the summer, she was sentenced to nine years in prison and eventually sent to one of Russia's infamous penal colonies.

None of those developments prompted Mulkey — Griner's coach of four years — to speak out on her former star's behalf. Insider repeatedly attempted to contact Mulkey for comment via LSU women's basketball, but after several attempts to reach her by phone and by email, it became clear that the three-time national championship-winning coach had no intention of expressing her thoughts on a player who led her team to one of those NCAA titles.

Ahead of the Tigers' first practice of the 2022-23 season, Cory Diaz of The Lafayette Daily Advertiser asked Mulkey her thoughts on Griner's situation, noting that he "hasn't seen anything" from the coach regarding her former star player.

"And you won't," Mulkey said, cutting him off.

Several of Mulkey's former Baylor players — including Queen Egbo and Chloe Jackson — spoke out after learning of their college coach's curt response. Other women's basketball stars have since taken to social media to discuss the importance of choosing college coaches wisely.

But when reached for comment after Mulkey's press conference — and the backlash that followed — a representative for LSU women's basketball directed Insider to a portion of a 15-minute radio interview with the head coach from late June. In the clip, Mulkey says "I keep up" with developments on Griner but won't "make public comments about it" because "that's a personal issue."

Griner returned home to the US in December 2022. By the time her Tigers reached the Final Four a few months later, Mulkey told reporters she had not spoken with Griner but was "glad she's safe, she's sound. I think everybody is."

Through all of Mulkey's controversies, no one could deny that she is one of the most skilled basketball coaches of her generation. She backed that up in a massive way by leading the Tigers to their first-ever Final Four — and then to their first-ever national title.

Mulkey undoubtedly took a risk by leaving Baylor — where she'd built a powerhouse program — to start over again back home. In the season prior to Mulkey's hiring, LSU finished with a paltry 9-13 record and missed the NCAA tournament for the third straight season.

Her first year saw the Tigers finish with an improbable 26-6 record and a second-place finish in the stacked Southeastern Conference. And they further impressed in 2022-23, dropping just two contests en route to their national championship win.