Kim Mulkey didn’t have much time to ruminate over a season-ending loss to UCLA in the women’s Elite Eight.
The LSU women’s basketball coach told ESPN 104.5 FM on Tuesday that she turned her attention toward next year before she and her team’s flight from Spokane, Washington, even landed in Baton Rouge on Sunday.
“I’m on the phone, on the plane,” Mulkey told hosts T-Bob Hebert and Jacob Hester, “talking to portal kids. We’ve got our own kids that’ll get in the portal. It’s just free agency, and you just never know.”
Mulkey’s comments were part of a larger discussion about the transfer portal, the recruiting calendar, the state of college sports and when she may retire. She called the current state of affairs “tiring” and “broken
Now, athletes can transfer between schools an unlimited number of times without losing any eligibility.
For both men’s and women’s college basketball players, the transfer portal opened March 24 — right in between the second round of the NCAA Tournament and the Sweet 16. That timing forces coaches of teams still alive in the postseason to juggle the needs to both prepare for do-or-die games and recruit players from the portal.
Those teams, Mulkey said, are almost incentivized to lose early in the tournament. The ones who reach the second weekend risk falling behind in recruiting.
“I don’t have an answer,” Mulkey said. “I just know that my generation of coaches … they’re getting out. This is now what it’s supposed to be like. They’re not opposed to money. They’re not opposed to young people making all that they can. It’s just that the transfer portal is not healthy in their eyes.”
In that breath, Mulkey mentioned Nick Saban, the legendary former LSU and Alabama football coach who retired after the 2023 season. After he stepped down, Saban, 73, told ESPN that he was not ending his coaching career because the sport had become too hard to manage, though he did say that “everybody is frustrated about it.”
Mulkey, 62, also brought up Georgia Tech women’s basketball coach Nell Fortner, who retired on Monday two months after she agreed to a three-year contract extension.
In October, Tony Bennett abruptly resigned as the Virginia men’s basketball coach, citing a belief that he wasn’t suited to lead a team through the current landscape of college athletics.
Mulkey was then asked how she navigates the transfer portal and NIL and why she keeps coaching.
“What keeps me going?” Mulkey said. “Sometimes I ask myself that question. Honestly, why do I keep doing this? I don’t need to win more championships to validate my resume or my career. I never ever am motivated by money. Money, yes, it’s great, but at the end of the day, if you’re frugal with your money through the years of working, you have enough.”
Mulkey then said she feels a “sense of responsibility” to both LSU and the players she coaches. She views herself as the head of a company, she said, one with people who depend on her for their careers.
“I know that young people’s chief want in life,” Mulkey said, “is for somebody to push them to become what they’re capable of becoming. I just have to believe those things. And maybe that’s my answer to your question, is when I don’t feel like that is still the truth and what I believe, then maybe that’s when it’s time to retire.”
Mulkey is under contract with LSU through the 2033 season.
She and her staff recently signed the nation’s No. 1 freshman class, four players who can each contribute to next season’s team.
On Monday, LSU lost starting forward Sa’Myah Smith to the transfer portal. So far, she’s the only Tiger who has left the program.
LSU star Aneesah Morrow exhausted her eligibility, but both Mikaylah Williams and Flau’jae Johnson can return next season. Johnson, however, is age-eligible to declare for the 2025 WNBA Draft, and as of Tuesday afternoon, she hadn’t announced her plan for the future.
“They don’t get in the portal because they don’t like you or they’re not playing,” Mulkey said. “It’s, ‘Hey, got to go get some more money, some better NIL deals.’ It’s broken, guys.”
