The Guru Report: LSU Tops Iowa to Win First NCAA Women's Tourney in Six Final Four Attempts

 By Mel Greenberg @womhoopsguru

 

DALLAS, Texas – In the very first NCAA tournament in 1982, Kim Mulkey was a young point guard in pigtails helping to lead Louisiana Tech to a national title.

 

On Sunday afternoon with LSU well on the way to wrapping a record-breaking 102-85 victory here at the American Airlines Center over the Iowa team that dispatched then-unbeaten South Carolina in the semifinals Mulkey’s emotions got the better of the Hall of Fame coach with a remarkable completion of a two-year build.

 

“With about 1:30 to go, I couldn’t hold it,” Mulkey said. “I got very emotional. That’s really not like me until the buzzer goes off, but I knew we were going to hold on and win this game.

 

“I don’t know if it’s the mere fact that we’re doing this in my second year back home. I don’t know if it was the fact, I am home.

 

“I don’t know if it was the fact I am home. I don’t know if it was looking across at LSU. I don’t know what it was, but I lost it.”

 

The Tigers (34-2) could have lost it when they got into foul trouble in the first half.

 

But they were rescued by Jasmine Carson, a transfer who played previously at West Virginia and before that Georgia Tech, who shot the eyes out of the ball with 21 of her 22 points in the first half, including 5-for-5 from deep as the Tigers rode to a 59-42 lead over the Hawkeyes (31-7).

 

LSU’s 59 were a record for a half.

 

“I would definitely say this is the game of my life,” Carson said.

 

Mulkey gave credit to reserves Carson, Last-Tear Poa and SaMyah Smith for keeping the Tigers in front until getting transfers Angel Reese and Alexis Morris back on the floor.

 

Morris, a transfer previously with Rutgers and Baylor, where Mulkey won three championships and had dismissed her from the program, finished with 21 points.

 

She also guarded Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, third in the nation in scoring behind Villanova’s Maddy Siegrist and Drexel’s Keishana Washington, who had 30 but was limited on layups.

 

“Lex, she’s a first rounder,” Reese said of her teammate. “I told her all year, I told her, don’t turn on and off. You can kill every single possession that you can if you really want to. 

 

“I’ve told her that. She just gets into a mode where she’s unstoppable at some point.

 

“She played a great defensive game. It wasn’t all her defense. It was her offense. Caitlin was a great player for sure.”

 

Reese, the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player who came from Maryland, had 15 points and 10 rebounds, setting an NCAA season record with 34 double-doubles.

 

“Every single time, every time I go out or Alexis goes out, everybody always comes to step up,” Reese said.

 

LaDazhia Williams had 20 points for the Tigers.

 

Clark broke former Texas Tech star Sheryl Swoopes’ 1993 tournament record of 177 by scoring 191, while LSU set a championship game record for points, passing the 97 by Texas set in 1986 against the senior-led Cheryl Miller Southern Cal squad.

 

“Caitlin was a great player for sure,” said Reese. “She had 30 but we contained her the best she could, and we knew that other supporting class, the other players couldn’t go off.” 

 

Iowa’s Monika Czinano and Kate Martin each had 13 and Gabbie Marshall scored 12.

 

The Hawkeyes set a record for points in a defeat before a sellout crowd of 19,482. The entire tournament set a record with a combination crowd of 357,542 over 67 games busting the previous mark of 334,587, set in 2003.

 

“They were tremendous,” Clark said of LSU. “They made some tough threes, some tough jumpers off the ball screens, and sometimes you have to live with that.”

 

Mulkey moves ahead of Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer with four national titles, the three with Baylor and Sunday’s championship. She is topped by the 11 Geno Auriemma has won at UConn  and the eight the late Pat Summitt won at Tennessee.

 

Reese had considered Tennessee or South Carolina when transferring from Maryland but on a recruiting trip with Kateri Poole, was immediately attracted and voided the other visits.

 

“I beat the odds, LSU beat the odds, LSU beat the odds. Coach Mulkey beat the odds, Morris listed the accomplishments,” said Morris who also played at Texas A&M.

 

Clark, the consensus player of the year, nationally, also set the three-point record for the tournament with 32.

 

The officiating took umbrage from the fans and media with 37 fouls called in the game, including a technical on Clark for delay of game.

 

“This is brutal,” Iowa coach Lisa Bluder said. “It’s really tough to walk out of that locker room today and to not be able to coach Monika and McKenna (Warnock) ever again, that’s tough.

 

“I’m very grateful for the season we had, and I don’t want anything to take away from that. We played the national championship game,” Bluder said.

 

“It’s very frustrating because I feel like I can’t talk to them. They won’t even listen. That’s what’s frustrating, is there wasn’t even a conversation that could be had. When your two seniors have to sit on the bench – they don’t know they’re seniors, I get it – but those two women didn’t deserve it. I don’t know. It’s too bad. Yeah, it’s too bad.”

 

Clark bemoaned the foul trouble with Czinano and Warnock finishing their careers on the bench disqualified in the fourth period.

 

“I thought they called it very, very tight. I don’t know about the two push offs in the second quarter, Clark said. “I’m sure they saw that I pushed off and they called it and whatnot and then hit with the technical foul in the third for throwing the ball under the basket.”

 

Mulkey kept saying as LSU advanced in the tournament she had no blueprint for this after arriving in her home state to take over a program that had been to the Final Four four times with such players as future WNBA stars Seimone Augustus, for whom there is now a statue, and Sylvia Fowles. 

 

Adding nine new players in the offseason, she acknowledged the transfer portal was a big fctor.

 

Clark with her sizzling scoring performances, including the 41 Friday night that helped end favored South Carolina’s 42-game win streak, including the six at the front resulting in last season’s title and the Gamecocks’ Aliyah Boston helped fuel boffo television ratings.

 

The widely anticipated duel on Friday night’s second game between Iowa and Clark drew six million viewers on ESPN.

 

Former Massachusetts governor Charlie Barker, the new NCAA president following his term that ended said the new TV deal that comes due soon could be worth multimillions of dollars.

 

Barker acknowledged that the women could draw units like the men in their tourney pending the new deal that kicks in after next season.

 

“The first thing we have to do is find out how much this tournament, as it has progressed over the last several years, is going to be worth in the marketplace overall,” Barker said at the men’s tournament, reported by ESPN, before coming here Sunday for the championship.

 

With Clark’s performance drawing eyeballs across the nation, ESPN put her in a class of similar magnetic performances such as Baylor’s Brittney Griner in 2012, Stanford’s Candice Wiggins in 2008, UConn’s Breanna Stewart in 2013, Tennessee’s Chamique Holdsclaw in 1997, Missouri State’s Jackie Stiles in 2001, Southern Cal’s Cheryl Miller in 1983, UConn’s Diana Taurasi in 2003, Notre Dame’s Arike Ogunbowale in 2018, Clark this season as No. 2 on the list, and Texas Tech’s Sheryl Swoopes in 1993, in which she averaged 35.4 in five games. That year the Red Raiders had an opening bye in what was a 48-team field.

 

First lady Jill Biden attended the game, sitting with Tennis great Billie Jean King.

 

During the game, news broke that Virginia Tech, which fell to LSU Friday night after leading in the third period, would be getting all-American Elizabeth Kitley back, who decided to take advantage of a fifth year of eligibility off the Covid legislation by the NCAA.

 

But others, such as Villanova’s Segrist and South Carolina’s Aliyah Boston will be in the draft, though she could declare to return to the Gamecocks.

 

South Carolina coach Dawn Staley, however, Friday night said she would advise her to go to the pros if asked, saying she’s ready.