Kim Mulkey’s awful game plan vs. Caitlin Clark is the reason LSU’s season is over

Kim Mulkey Distorted worldviews are easy to criticize. Her coaching acumen is not. The 61-year-old has had one of the greatest head coaching careers in college basketball history since taking the Baylor job in 2000. She has four national championships, five Final Four appearances and three AP College Basketball Coach of the Year awards. 700 wins in total.

By any definition, Mulkey is one of the greatest college basketball coaches of this generation in both the men’s and women’s games. She also won in style in what may be remembered as the most anticipated match of her career. It was a shocking rematch of the 2023 national championship game between her LSU Tigers and Caitlin Clark’s Iowa Hawkeyes in the Elite Eight of the 2024 Women’s NCAA Tournament.

Iowa State defeated LSU 94-87 thanks to a great performance from Clark. The superstar guard finished with 41 points, 12 assists and seven rebounds on 9-of-20 3-pointers in the win.

When Clark is at her best, she is nearly impossible to stop, and this match was the ultimate showcase of her amazing talent. From the start, she hit deep pull-up 3-pointers, threw perfect hit-ahead passes to fuel the Hawkeyes’ transition offense, and sliced ​​through LSU’s defense with lively dribble passes.

This was arguably the greatest college player of all time, and he was completely focused on a game he had waited an entire year for. No one might have been able to stop her on Monday night, but one thing’s for sure: Clark was never stopped by Mulkey’s strict galactic brain game plan. Really I tried.

Clark is a historic supernova, but the undeniable truth of the Iowa-LSU rematch is that the Tigers had a size and athletic advantage all over the court. He was the only player on LSU’s floor that lacked length and foot speed. That was guard Haley Van Lith. He transferred to the program from Louisville during the offseason as one of the most high-profile players in the sport.

For some reason, Mulkey decides to have Van Lith guard Clark all night. She decided not to trap Clark in ball screens or throw double teams. She decided to go into drop coverage on big plays and leave her pull-up 3-point shots wide open. In other words, Mulkey decided to give Clark “his own” to keep the rest of the Hawkeyes from losing to LSU. That was incredibly stupid.

To become a high-level coach in single-elimination tournaments, it’s important to adjust when your initial strategy doesn’t work. Mulkey refused until it was too late.

Mulkey could have thrown rising sophomore star Frauge Johnson to Clark defensively. Perhaps Johnson didn’t waste too much energy on defense because she didn’t want to do it. LSU also relied heavily on her offensive contributions (she scored a team-high 23 points in the win). Even if she wanted to stick with Van Lith, Mulkey could have switched coverage earlier and turned her deep drops into more aggressive blitzes to take the rock out of Clark’s hands. .

Instead, she stuck to the same defensive blueprint throughout. Clark kept it lit.

Van Lith never had the length to challenge Clark’s shot. Clark, who is 6 feet tall, took the shot directly above her. At 5-foot-6, Van Lith is the smallest player on the court, and Monday night she had the toughest task in basketball. She didn’t really have a chance because the big teams are moving backwards.

These shots are too easy for the best shooter in the history of the women’s college game.

To be fair, Clark was so excited that it might not have mattered what LSU did. She easily defeated Last Tear Pore, a 5:11 guard.

Clark has the same relentless competitive spirit that once inspired Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. Her Hawkeyes’ loss to LSU in the national title game last season haunted her all summer, and it turned her senior year into a highlight. It’s hard to imagine a scenario where she loses this match.

Of course, basketball is a team sport. I felt like if Iowa State had the best player, LSU could have had a No. 2, No. 3, No. 4 player. To be fair, the rest of the Hawkeyes played very well in this game, with Kate Martin scoring 21 points on 8-of-16 shooting and Sydney Affolter with 16 points. Finished. Hannah Stuelke played midfield against Angel Reese & Co., scoring 8 points and grabbing 5 rebounds. It didn’t help LSU that Reese injured his ankle in the first half and even though he returned, he wasn’t 100 percent physically for the rest of the game.

Still, Mulkey built a talented LSU roster that he felt fell short of this season. Obviously Mulkey knows a lot more than me or anyone else criticizing her game plan against Iowa. She is Malki, and the way she lives her life is not doing her any good. Fans on Twitter have noticed that Mulkey is L.

Van Lith didn’t do that. worthy of being put in that position, especially with rumors coming into the game that she was battling an illness. Van Lith is a good athlete, but he is sometimes too small to defend one-on-one against the top predators in his sport. He may need help sometimes. Mulkey refused to be dispatched, and the Tigers’ season ended in part because of that.