LSU women’s basketball head coach Kim Mulkey continues to fire warning shots at the Washington Post.
On Saturday, Mulkey, 61, threatened to sue the Washington Post for defamation over an apparent “hit piece” that has been rumored to be in the works.
Following LSU’s come-from-behind victory over 11th-seeded Middle Tennessee in the March Madness Round of 32 on Sunday, a USA Today reporter asked Mulkey, generally, if “external” distractions might have caused the team’s sluggish start.
“No, listen man, we’re not gonna let one sleazy reporter distract us from what we’re trying to do. Absolutely not,” Mulkey said.
“My kids didn’t even know I said that yesterday. That team’s not involved in this,” Mulkey continued.
“They were in shock when they saw all that on the internet. I don’t take that stuff to my team.”
Middle Tennessee had a 41-32 lead early in the second half, but LSU barnstormed the rest of the game, winning 83-56.
LSU’s next game is slated for Saturday, versus the winner of Creighton-UCLA, with a potential rematch of last year’s national championship game against Iowa looming if both teams can advance to the Elite Eight.
This brouhaha with the Washington Post began last week when veteran SI reporter Pat Forde wrote on X that there was a “big” story on Mulkey “in the works”.
“I wouldn’t normally discuss media rumors about me, but I felt the need to publicly address what exactly this reporter for the Washington Post has been doing the past several years,” Mulkey told reporters on Saturday.
“And the lengths he has gone to try and put a hit piece together. This reporter has been working on a story about me for two years. After two years of trying to get me to sit with him for an interview, he contacts LSU on Tuesday, as we were getting ready for the first-round game of this [NCAA] tournament, with more than a dozen questions, demanding a response by Thursday right before we’re scheduled to tip off. Are you kidding me?”
She added that the reporter had previously executed a “hit job” on LSU football coach Brian Kelly.
“This was a ridiculous deadline that LSU and I could not possibly meet, and the reporter knew it,” Mulkey continued.
“It’s just an attempt to prevent me from commenting and an attempt to distract us from this tournament. It ain’t gonna work, buddy. Unfortunately, this is part of a pattern that goes back years. I told this reporter two years ago that I didn’t appreciate the hit job he wrote on Brian Kelly, and that’s why I wasn’t going to do an interview with him. After that, the reporter called two former college coaches of mine and left multiple messages that he was with me in Baton Rouge to get them to call him back — trying to trick these coaches into believing that I was working with the Washington Post on a story.”
While Mulkey never named the reporter, longtime Washington Post writer Kent Babb tweeted out a story he wrote in 2022, with the caption, “hit piece?”
In her media availability on Saturday, Mulkey threatened litigious action.
“I’ve hired the best defamation law firm in the country and I will sue the Washington Post if they publish a false story about me,” she said. “Not many people are in a position to hold these kinds of journalists accountable, but I am. And I’ll do it.”