After the game, a reporter noted that it was the second consecutive year the Tigers had been eliminated in the Elite Eight. Jokingly, Mulkey replied with “terrible,” before asking the reporter “how many Final Fours have you played in?”
It seemed like it was meant as a light hearted exchange, but it also seems to have rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, including one of the biggest personalities in all of sports, Stephen A. Smith
“I’m not going to take away from the fact that Kim Mulkey is a great coach and an established coach,” said Stephen A. Smith on Monday. “We just need to finally say this about her: she’s very rude. She’s very, very rude. She’s rude and condescending and unnecessarily so to too many people. And it’s always with the right one. She don’t go up to the wrong one. It’s almost like she knows who to do that to and who not to do that to. There’s certain people you do that to, they’re gonna clap back.”
Mulkey isn’t a big fan of the media and isn’t afraid to express her feelings while in the press conference room. I personally think her comments were taken out of context on this occasion. To me, someone who’s been in a lot of press conferences, it felt like it was a bit of a joke, but either way, the internet has ran with it and turned it into a bad thing.
