Rumors are swirling as LSU coach Kim Mulkey says little about Angel Reese’s absence
LSU welcomed the spotlight. The Tigers embraced it. They wanted to be the prey.
After all, you don’t embark on a national title defense by stalking the transfer portal and bringing in the nation’s top recruiting class to fly under the radar.
The Tigers were the petri dish of modern college basketball under the microscope of watchful eyes, an almost historic accumulation of talent on one roster under coach Kim Mulkey. It was as big as possible. Tigers fans were welcomed to the Pete Maravich Assembly Center for the first practice of the season by a giant video screen that read in all caps: “COME SEE THE SHOW.”
But two months later, we’re still not sure if it’s a drama, comedy or tragedy.
The seventh-ranked Tigers host No. 9 Virginia Tech on Thursday night in a game that should be billed as the best matchup of the week, one of the few primetime contests on ESPN this season. Instead of? We’re not talking about the matchup. We’re not even talking about basketball.
We’re talking about the other show. Everything else swirls around the defending champions.
We’re talking about the mysterious absence of LSU’s star player, Angel Reese, and Mulkey’s cryptic, terse responses to questions about the situation. We wonder what all this could mean for a team that, on paper, was the most talented in the country and finished No. 1 this year.
There is a lot we don’t know. We don’t know why Reese was benched midway through the Kent State game on Nov. 14 or why she hasn’t been seen in an LSU uniform since that night. We don’t know if she trains with the team. We do not know why Kateri Poole did not also participate in the Cayman Islands Classic. We don’t know if the two absences are related. And we don’t know why Mulkey has refused to provide any real clarity on these issues, if only enough to quell rumors and speculation.
We knew LSU would get its opponent’s best shots this season. But LSU has now created problems for itself as well.
Mulkey isn’t the first coach in history to bench a star player and be asked about it. And there are valid questions to ask in these situations: What happened? How long will these players be out? Are there conditions that must be met in order to return?
Mulkey has stated at post-game press conferences that the media has no right to these answers. And that’s a great response. In fact, it might be the best response for a team with this level of spotlight and star power.
But what Mulkey should know — as someone who has led major programs for nearly 25 years, from a time when there was little women’s basketball coverage to today’s relatively nascent media landscape — is that the microscope is zooming in. Everything she says will be parsed and dissected. And then it will spread like wildfire.
When the Tigers took the floor without Reese three days after the game against Kent State, Mulkey said, “Angel is a part of this basketball team and we hope she is back with the team soon. I’m not going to answer more than that.” Three days later, after saying that the public should not know if Reese was practicing with the team, Mulkey was asked about her coaching style. “You’re always dealing with locker room problems,” she said. She later added: “It’s like a family. If you discipline your own children at all, do you think we have a right to know? That’s a family in that locker room.”
Don’t the media have a right to know this? Or do Does this have anything to do with locker room issues and discipline? In Reese’s 4 1/2 game absence, Mulkey and LSU simply let these words linger and rehash, without clarifying or walking back the statements. Her verbal breadcrumbs have led to the most obvious endpoint: rumors.
Mulkey has repeatedly said she protects her players.
But does it really protect them to leave so much open to interpretation, knowing all too well where vague statements lead? Even though she says she doesn’t use social media, do you understand the kind of rumors that will swirl the longer this goes on without any kind of clarity or closure or a defined end date? Does it protect the other players on her team to have the dominant conversation about this immensely talented group that is so focused on something other than the quest for the national title?
There may not be a perfect way to handle all of this, but if she had clearly stated how long Reese would be in and categorized it somehow, it would have helped limit the speculation. In addition to missing two key players, there are now also questions about how Mulkey will handle (or mishandle) this situation.
Assuming Reese and Poole eventually return, everything from here on out will be under scrutiny. Every time, the Tigers look disjointed on the field. Every time Mulkey yells at a player, especially if it’s Reese or Poole. Each time, LSU seems out of sync or disinterested.
These little moments become the kind of weight that can follow a team like a shadow through the season. But that’s the problem with shadows: they appear where the sun shines brightest. And that’s exactly where LSU wanted to be.
The Tigers wanted this spotlight. They wanted the eyeballs. They wanted people to watch.
That’s exactly what they got. And now?
The show must go on.
(Photo of Kim Mulkey and Angel Reese: Grant Halverson/NCAA Photos via Getty Images)