GREENVILLE, S.C. — Kim Mulkey likes to win. She likes to win at any time and in anywhere, in any format and in any venue.
However after seeing one in every of her star gamers — All-SEC ahead Aneesah Morrow — exit LSU’s SEC Event semifinal loss to Texas with a foot damage, she isn’t actually positive why convention tournaments are nonetheless a factor. Mulkey, who gained 11 Huge 12 Tournaments throughout her tenure at Baylor, doesn’t see the purpose or validity in them any longer, a minimum of in ladies’s faculty basketball.
“I’ve gained a bunch of convention tournaments. All people likes to win. All people likes to get a trophy,” Mulkey stated. “However on the finish of the day, I’ve additionally been in these tournaments the place I had accidents. These children couldn’t go on and play in crucial match, the NCAA Event. I don’t know why we play them, to be sincere.”
Mulkey added: “I do know typically you could have a Cinderella on the boys’s facet, however very not often do you see a Cinderella on the ladies’s facet at a (Energy 4) stage. You bought to play, however I’ve by no means been a fan of convention tournaments. To me, it’s too lengthy. You probably have convention tournaments, do we actually want all 16 groups within the convention match? I don’t know. They don’t care what we expect, proper? Directors make all the selections. We simply give an opinion. They both prefer it or they don’t.”
Morrow, who will possible be an AP All-American this season and leads the nation in rebounding, went down early within the third quarter and needed to be helped off the court docket. She later returned to LSU’s bench sporting a padded boot on her left foot and didn’t reenter the sport because the Tigers fell 56-49 to the Longhorns.
After the sport, Mulkey stated that Morrow “re-aggravated a mid-foot sprain” she suffered earlier within the season. She’s the second LSU star to need to grapple with a lower-body damage this month. Level guard Flau’Jae Johnson has missed the final three video games whereas coping with irritation in her shins.
Johnson and Morrow are LSU’s two main scorers this season, averaging 18.9 and 18.5 factors per sport, respectively. With them, LSU has appeared like among the finest groups within the nation — one which has piled up a document of 28-5 this season that has locked up internet hosting rights for the primary weekend of the NCAA Event.
However with out them, the Tigers might discover themselves within the crosshairs of an upset in March Insanity.
Regardless of her ire for convention tournaments and frustrations together with her gamers getting harm, Mulkey assured people within the postgame press convention that Morrow and Johnson might be again for the NCAA Event.
“Oh, yeah, (Morrow) can go. She will go for the (NCAA) match. She was prepared to come back again on the market,” Mulkey stated. “Win or lose, we’ve playoffs internet hosting. Flau’Jae might be again. Every thing is nice… We’ve got all people.”
