Kim Mulkey previews NCAA Tournament, LSU's path ahead

LSU received a No. 2 seed for the NCAA Tournament and is in the Sacramento region, the best seed in Kim Mulkey’s tenure at LSU. The Tigers are paired with No. 1 seed UCLA, No. 3 Duke, No. 4 Minnesota, No. 5 Ole Miss, and No. 6 Baylor, and No. 7 Texas Tech.

LSU hopes to return to the Final Four with the deepest roster Mulkey has had in her time in Baton Rouge. After the bracket reveal, Mulkey talked with local media about her thoughts on the field and what’s ahead. She admitted she does not know much about No. 15 seed Jacksonville or No. 7 Texas Tech and No. 10 Villanova, but is getting to work on them tomorrow.

Here are the highlights of what she said.

After the SEC tournament, did you feel like everyone needed to rest and reset a little bit?

“I think all of us do. Probably every school gives their team a few days off and just starts over. Everything you’ve done is history, scratch it off, put a big X on it, and go, “Let’s start the real season now.” It’ll be good to be back on the floor. We’ve been on the floor since Wednesday, but it’ll be good to be back and know who we’re preparing for. The unknown is you’re not just preparing for Jacksonville, you’ve got to do your homework on the other two because should you win, you don’t know who you’re going to play. We’ll be prepared.”

On getting a No. 2 seed…

“This is our fifth year doing this, and this is the highest seed we’ve had ever at LSU. If you couldn’t get a one seed, you’re the first two seed. That’s progress. That shows the trajectory is up. The trajectory was already up when you won the national championship, but I think that needs to be written. It’s going to get lost in everything, lost in the fact that we’re playing UCLA for the third time in three years if we get to that point. I shouldn’t say play them, we’re in that region because I don’t look ahead. My focus will be on the first and second round games here. But don’t get lost on what we just accomplished.”

On her point guard play entering the postseason…

“A lot of coaches like to talk about the fact that guards are what you have to have to win championships. That may be true if that’s your philosophy, your system, and you don’t have a post player. We’re playing against some of the best post players in this particular bracket, big, tall, everything runs through them so the guards do better. I don’t buy that it’s a guard deal in the playoffs. If you’ve got a post, your posts are usually going to be what your offense runs through. We’re going to continue to do what we do. I think we have some seasoned young ones now. When you go through the SEC, as y’all well know, it’s kind of a breath of fresh air to get out of there and start the playoffs. You just got to be playing your best basketball at the right time, all five on that floor and even the bench.”

How will depth help you in this tournament?

“About the same that it has all year. We’ve played eight, nine, sometimes go the whole bench depending on the score, the game. Not afraid to play them. You’ve got to have depth, and when you do have depth that’s seasoned and comfortable and confident, it helps you. Now, you only got to win six games to win it all, so it’s not like you got to really rest people like you do through a regular season. You’re subbing, but you’re not subbing to rest, you’re subbing because you need to sub at that moment. What are you resting for? There is no tomorrow.”

On the young players stepping up…

“I hope the SEC has prepared them. You look at the arenas we’ve gone into and how large those arenas and fans are, or how many are in an arena when we go, and a lot of them are for us. Just going on the road, the SEC tournament, I think it prepares them for the postseason. Quite honestly, we’re going to go play and how many are really going to be in that arena? I don’t know. You just played in Greenville, packed. You play here, it’s packed. You go to other places in the league, it’s packed.”

Is there anything you try to tweak before the tournament starts?

“Tweak? No. We’ll focus mainly on our opponents now. We had Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday to tweak things. Now it’s time to work on your opponents and things that you potentially could see and that you need to work on.”

What did you think of UConn or UCLA for the No. 1 seed?

“I can see both ways. This is what I say every year and I’ve tried to tell y’all: There is no formula that the 12 people sitting there follow. They end up having to do what they have to do to make things work. If you just went by a formula, we’d be playing South Carolina, we’d be in that region. They’re not going to do that. They’re sure not going to put you with Texas either. The next in line was obviously the two seed. There’s always the argument: How many ranked teams did UCLA play this year? And there’s always that argument—they didn’t play many. How many times have you heard my strength of non-conference schedule? And we still had a five NET this year. We’re the number one two seed. There’s just no formula. So there’s 12 people in a room trying to figure it out and do the best they can. They have some parameters, some guidelines, but it screws it up when you’ve got a league like the SEC. You can’t follow the S-curve. I do hate it for LSU fans because it would be so convenient to go to Fort Worth. We were in Albany last year. We go back to Sacramento, we were there the year before that. We’ve been a long way away.”