The Tigers are the clear team to beat entering the 2023-24 season and beyond.
For better or for worse, women’s college basketball has always been a sport prone to dynasties.
This century, it has largely been UConn and legendary coach Geno Auriemma’s domain. The program has won 11 titles during his nearly 40-year tenure (10 of which have come since 2000) and made 14 consecutive Final Fours, a streak that only ended this spring.
There’s been a new challenger to the Huskies’ hegemony in recent years in Dawn Staley’s South Carolina program, which has won two titles since 2017 and is currently riding a three-year Final Four streak.
Now, there’s another claimant to the women’s college basketball throne, and it hails from the bayou.
Friday, defending national champion LSU secured a massive commitment from the transfer portal in DePaul All-American forward Aneesah Morrow. It’s the second major addition coach Kim Mulkey has brought in from the portal this offseason, alongside Louisville guard Hailey Van Lith.
LSU is the favorite to repeat as champions in 2024, and there’s a good reason for it: Mulkey could be building a dynasty in Baton Rouge to rival any in college sports.
Tigers athletics director Scott Woodward is known as a big-game hunter when it comes to hiring head coaches, landing Jimbo Fisher at Texas A&M and Brian Kelly at LSU. But when the women’s basketball job came open in 2021, he was just as aggressive in finding a replacement. That search led him to the longtime head coach at Baylor.
It can’t be overstated how big of a deal it was to woo Mulkey — a Louisiana native whose son, Kramer Robertson, is a former LSU baseball star — away from Waco. She won three national titles during her 22-year run with the Bears and could have easily ridden out the rest of her career with the team, still going out as an all-time coach in the sport in her own right.
Instead, she has the chance to leave behind an even bigger legacy.
LSU hiring Mulkey in 2021 paid immediate dividends for a program that had missed three-straight NCAA tournaments before her arrival and was searching for its first Final Four appearance since reaching five straight from 2004-08.
The Tigers earned a No. 3 seed in March Madness her first year in the 2021-22 season, and though that team was bounced in the NCAA tournament second round, that was just a preview of what was to come. LSU went 28-2 during the regular season in 2022-23, earning a No. 3 seed once again. This time, however, things would end differently.
Aside from a three-point win over Utah in the Sweet 16, the Tigers weren’t even particularly challenged en route to winning the program’s first title (and Mulkey’s fourth overall). The team was led by tournament MVP Angel Reese, who set an NCAA record with 34 double-doubles on the season.
Reese, one of the sport’s most electric players on and off the court, is back along with star freshman guard Flau’Jae Johnson. In addition, the Tigers will reload with two of the most talented players in the portal in Van Lith, a three-year starter with the Cardinals, and Morrow, the national Freshman of the Year in 2022, after losing Alexis Morris and LaDazhia Williams to the WNBA draft.
Like Reese last offseason when she transferred in from Maryland, Morrow’s list of finalists included South Carolina, and she was planning a trip to Columbia this weekend. But also like Reese, she ultimately canceled that trip, spurning Staley to pledge with Mulkey and the Tigers.
To put it simply, an already opulent program just became even richer.
The Tigers are clearly the team to beat heading into the 2023-24 season, but even that doesn’t feel like we’re thinking big enough. The Tigers have all the ingredients to dominate this sport for years to come.
Mulkey has created an absolute machine in Baton Rouge, and as long as she’s running the show, everyone else in the country may be playing catch-up.
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