“Would like to buy every coach that coached me a national championship ring”: When Kim Mulkey revealed the reason behind sweet gesture for her mentors

Kim Mulkey revealed the reason LSU Tigers had asked for more championship rings for its 2023 NCAA tourney than a program would usually order. While speaking to the Advocate's features editor, Jan Risher, in an interview in October 2023, Mulkey revealed that she desired to gift a title ring to every coach who ever coached her.

While the LSU coach then went through the names of people who coached her at different stops in life, she said that most of them live in Louisiana. Mulkey revealed that it is the reason she did not have the same idea when she won the championship with Baylor.

"The reason I thought about it now versus when I was at Baylor, all the coaches that coach me except for one are still living and they live in the state of Louisiana," she said (at 3:58).

"I'm going to buy all of them a ring I'm going to bring them back for a special ceremony and introduce them ... I want all of them to receive a ring and we're going to invite them back for a game and have a little ceremony for them ... it's meaningful to me and probably not to anybody else."

Kim Mulkey honored seven of her former coaches from Hammond High, her AAU teams, Hammond Junior High and Louisiana Tech, with championship rings during the halftime of the Tigers' win over Mississippi Valley State in Nov. 2023.

Kim Mulkey looks back at winning the 2023 NCAA championship game

The championship coach looked back at the LSU Tigers' title game against a lightning-hot Iowa Hawkeyes and Caitlin Clark. While she has orchestrated trophy runs before, she said that her team nearly played perfect basketball to win it all.

"I've won national championships and they're all special because they're hard to do," she said (at 1:50). "What made this one different was being at LSU, being the first ever at LSU in basketball, period.

"And then it was a game where we could do no wrong. And as a coach, you dream of those games that you almost play a perfect game."

Kim Mulkey's crew outscored the Iowa Hawkeyes in almost every category in the finale, shooting 54.3% from the floor and 64.7% from the 3-point line.

In the remaining five contests of its NCAA run, the Tigers shot 39.4% from the field and only 16.6% from the 3-point line.