Louisiana State Coach Kim Mulkey had been trying to temper expectations all season.
She had added nine new players. Who knew how they would jell? In her second year coaching at L.S.U., nobody should expect a national championship, she argued.
But there was Mulkey in Sunday’s national championship game, clad in a sequin pantsuit that looked like something between a disco ball and an exploded glitter bomb, leading the third-seeded Tigers to their first women’s basketball championship with a convincing victory, 102-85, over Iowa and its superstar sharpshooter, Caitlin Clark. The Tigers’ 102 points were the most in a Division I women’s title game.