'Basketball royalty in this state': Kim Mulkey gifts LSU title rings to former coaches
Coaches wearing different school's colors don't receive standing ovation, far less than a bow from Kim Mulkey.
Proudly donning his Louisiana Tech quarter zip during LSU women's basketball's halftime ceremony of the team's 109-47 victory over Mississippi Valley State Sunday afternoon where Mulkey honored the coaches that impacted her life, game and coaching philosophy, Leon Barmore took to floor inside the Pete Maravich Assembly Center with a beaming smile.
"I know basketball royalty," Mulkey said of the group of her former coaches she recognized with LSU NCAA championship rings for the team's national title last season.
Under Mary Jo Castell her freshman and sophomore years and then Iwana McGee her junior and senior seasons at Hammond High School, Mulkey helped the team win four straight state championships from 1976 to 1980.
Fifty years ago in 1974, Sonja Hogg vividly remembers ordering the first set of jerseys and basketball as she built the Louisiana Tech's women's basketball program from the ground up behind the vision and blessing of then Louisiana Tech University President F.J. Taylor.
She recruited Barmore, the boys basketball coach at Ruston High School, to join her staff and six years later, they landed the prospect from Tangipahoa Parish she began courting as a seventh-grader in Mulkey.
The Lady Techsters had already been to the AIWA Final Four a couple of times but with the sparky freshman point guard sporting pig tails and high-top Chuck Taylors, Tech captured its first national championship in 1980 and repeated in 1981.
"Recruiting her at 14 years old, those pigtails and those Chuckie Taylor purple hightops. I told Leon, 'She hasn't grown an inch but we better get after recruiting her,'" Hogg told The Daily Advertiser Sunday. "And we did. Everybody was recruiting her, LSU was. They brought her on campus for a football game.
"She was as honest then as she is now. She said, 'If I was playing football, I'd be right here at LSU but I'm playing women's basketball and I'm going to Louisiana Tech.' She told them that here."
On the AAU circuit back in the late 70s, there were few better than Gayle Montalvo out of Opelousas and Charlie Domino out of New Orleans. Montalvo won more than 1,100 games between AAU and LHSAA sanctioned games at six different schools.
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Barmore said he and Hogg saw Domino's AAU teams plenty due to his ability to develop players. Mulkey was assuredly one of those future stars.
"We owe Charlie a lot. Kim evidently had some good coaches growing up," Barmore said. "I think Kim recognizes those coaches that helped her get there, when you start out you've got to have some positive things happen to you. It's pretty important to you."
The coaches Mulkey has been taught by and grown under arguably make up a Who's Who with the state of Louisiana in women's basketball. The group certainly does to her.
"What Sonja Hogg and Leon Barmore did at Louisiana Tech was unheard of," Mulkey said. "For them to coexist, he did all the coaching and she did all the recruiting, that was special. That was an era of crazy good at Louisiana Tech.
"At my high school, we won four state championships. This all started in AAU basketball and eighth-grade we were undefeated. It was special for me – it was emotional."
Hogg and Barmore along with Fairy Hannible, who Mulkey played for at Hammond Junior High, Montalvo, Domino, Castell McGee's sisters who stood in for her as McGee passed away from cancer years ago, were all gifted rings by Mulkey.
"It's very special. She's very special to me and all of women's basketball," Hogg said. "She's special to LSU and to the state of Louisiana. These things come with getting a little older. I'm very proud of her and her success. I'm more proud that she's from not far from here and I had her at Louisiana Tech. I'm from Louisiana. I'm a Louisiana girl. But there's something about coming home. She's looked back and it's fun. I appreciate her.
"What Kim has done here in two years -- I mean, whenever you break the record for people who attend and watch women's basketball and the Final Four, more than the men, that in and of itself is a stat that is unbelievable."
Mulkey left a cushiony job at Baylor, where she had won three NCAA titles, to come back to her homestate and help make LSU relevant against in women's basketball. Her motivation in "this last third of her coaching career" has kept home in the forefront.
Honoring her former coaches she wanted to make sure it drove that point home.
"That group meant a lot to the state of Louisiana. That was basketball royalty on the women's side," Mulkey said. "A lot of them didn't get the recognition that women's basketball gets now. But that was a lot of wins on that floor. All of those people in this state have done a tremendous amount of good for women's basketball."
To Barmore, there's one person that must be mentioned among the coaches Mulkey honored. And that's Mulkey herself.
"It's shows a soft side of Kim. A lot of people see the tough coaching but Kim is very tender-hearted. I know her better than most and she has a lot of love for a lot of people," Barmore said. "She's showing it now with her love toward her coaches like myself.
"I owe Kim a lot more than she owes me. She's giving me a ring I should be giving her a car. She's done more for me than you can imagine. I recognize and appreciate that. As a player and as a coach, I owe Kim a lot and I'm very grateful she's doing this."
Cory Diaz covers the LSU Tigers and Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns for The Daily Advertiser as part of the USA TODAY Network. Follow his Tigers and Cajuns coverage on Twitter: @ByCoryDiaz. Got questions regarding LSU/UL athletics? Send them to Cory Diaz at bdiaz@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Lafayette Daily Advertiser: Kim Mulkey honors former coaches with LSU NCAA championship rings
