Kim Mulkey addresses UCLA coach Cori Close's apology for sharing LA Times column
LSU women’s basketball moved on to the Elite 8 with a Sweet 16 victory over UCLA Saturday, but there was plenty of drama surrounding the big win for the Tigers.
Prior to the game, the LA Times published an article previewing the game as a sort of hero vs. villain battle with UCLA the heroes who are “as wholesome as a miniature stuffed Bruin mascot.” Meanwhile, it referenced LSU’s players as “dirty debutantes” before the paper ultimately removed that line after LSU head coach Kim Mulkey passionately defended her players against the article after the win over UCLA.
However, prior to the game, UCLA head coach Cori Close had retweeted the article, which was titled, “Commentary: UCLA-LSU is America’s sweethearts vs. its basketball villains.” Following Mulkey’s comments in the postgame, Close did issue an apology on Twitter for retweeting the article prior to the game, noting that she didn’t read the whole piece and “would never want to promote anything that tears down a group of people in our great game.”
So, at Sunday morning’s media availability in between the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 games, reporters brought up Close’s apology to Kim Mulkey, who had this to say on the subject:
“Guys, I don’t know social media, I don’t read newspaper articles unless somebody gives it to me, and I was actually in the bed sleeping with my grandson and my assistant sent this Cori Close apology. I didn’t even understand what that was about. So they had to explain that she retweeted something, because I guess she retweeted that article, so I read it.”
Mulkey’s comments the day prior didn’t address Close retweeting the article and it appears she didn’t hear about the retweet until after the apology was issued. But in those postgame comments, Mulkey was very upset about the language of the article and how it portrayed her players.
“You can criticize coaches all you want. That’s our business. You can come at us and say you’re the worst coach in America. I hate you. I hate everything about you. We expect that. It comes with the territory. But the one thing I’m not gonna let you do, I’m not gonna let you attack young people. There were some things in this commentary that you should be offended by as women. It was so sexist and they don’t even know it.”
With all of that out of the way, Kim Mulkey and the Tigers must now turn around and game plan to stop Caitlin Clark once again in a 2023 national title rematch with a trip back to the Final Four on the line.