The 2024-25 basketball season tips off for LSU with expectations at the ultimate level for the Lady Tigers of Kim Mulkey and vast improvement anticipated from Matt McMahon’s team. McMahon is a solid, earnest leader, but Mulkey sucks oxygen from any room she shares with a fellow coach. With her bold wardrobe, combative style and brassy attitude, her persona exudes success with a track record worthy of her mega-million-dollar contract.
The investment from Scott Woodward into women’s basketball has paid enormous dividends for the branding of the university, and Woodward is comfortable in elevating a female coach in a non-revenue sport to a position where she is the face of the LSU athletic department.
LSU boasts a single national championship in the history of play in men’s and women’s basketball. The women of TigerTown won it all in 2023 in Mulkey’s second season, and the men have gone 90 years since Sparky Wade led the Bengals of Harry Rabenhorst to the national college throne in 1935. It was so long ago that Huey Long was still alive to savor the moment.
Basketball at the PMAC ascended to a perch as the top sport on campus from 1978-93 when Dale Brown was 340-167 overall with two Final Fours and four SEC regular season championships. During that period, the Tigers were the equal in hoops to the biggest brand in the SEC in any sport—Kentucky basketball.
There were continuous sell-outs in the Deaf Dome from the eras of Rudy Macklin to Chris Jackson to Shaquille O’Neal, and Brown scheduled rigorous non-conference foes rather than pad his record with patsies. The man from Minot was the maestro of a show that produced full houses with the same frequency of the run of “Hamilton” on Broadway.
Regular season dates during Brown’s salad days featured bouts with Duke, North Carolina, UCLA, Georgetown, UNLV, Kansas, Louisville, Arizona, Stanford, Oklahoma State, Oklahoma, Michigan, Maryland, Illinois, DePaul, Syracuse, Houston, Memphis State, Villanova, California, UTEP, Wake Forest, Texas, Iowa, Notre Dame, USC, Washington and Loyola-Marymount.
Brown was more intent to please his fan base than enhance his winning percentage. This is unusual for coaches who are looking to avoid losses in non-conference defeats at all costs.
LSU will always place football above all other sports because it is the chief revenue producer. Women’s basketball is a money loser while men’s programs sometimes achieve black ink.
With a monolithic giant to shoot at each season in Lexington, SEC basketball is intensely competitive on the men’s court. Among Tiger coaches, only Brown, Rabenhorst and Will Wade have recorded overall winning records in SEC competition. Each season, there are about 25 men’s programs with a chance to capture the NCAA trophy while only a handful of women’s programs are championship caliber. McMahon has a much tougher job of winning than does Mulkey because of the depth of competition.
These are the SEC records of the ten most prominent LSU men’s coaches in the modern era.
Coach / SEC / Years
Dale Brown / 238-200 / 1972-1997
Harry Rabenhorst / 215-158 / 1932-1957
John Brady / 74-93 / 1997-2008
Will Wade / 55-33 / 2017-2022
Press Maravich / 45-63 / 1966-1972
Johnny Jones / 42-48 / 2012-2017
Jay McCreary / 41-73 / 1957-1965
Trent Johnson / 25-39 / 2008-2012
Matt McMahon / 11-25 / 2022-2024
Frank Truitt / 2-14 / 1965-1966
The overall conference record of these ten is 748-746 (50.1 Percent). Amazingly, the group has collected a total of 12 SEC regular season titles; 4 for Brown, 4 for Rabenhorst, 2 for Brady, 1 for Johnson and 1 for Wade.
By contrast, LSU women’s coaches have generally been successful in the conference from a won-loss perspective, but they have had more difficulty winning SEC championships.
LSU went to the national championship game in the college ranks in 1977 under Jinks Coleman, but the sport was not connected to the SEC at that point.
The last LSU women’s coach to win the SEC crown for basketball was Van Chancellor in 2008. The other conference titles were captured by Pokey Chatman in 2005 and in 2006. Sue Gunter did not win conference honors in 22 seasons, nor has Mulkey in three seasons.
These are the SEC records of the five most prominent LSU women’s basketball coaches.
Coach / SEC / Years
Sue Gunter / 132-111 / 1982-2004
Nikki Fargas / 81-77 / 2011-2021
Pokey Chatman / 45-9 / 2003-2007
Kim Mulkey / 41-7 / 2021-2024
Van Chancellor / 41-19 / 2007-2011
The overall conference record for these five stalwarts is 340-223 (60.4 percent). The percentage is 10.3 percent better than the ledger for the LSU male counterparts in the league.
Goals remain high for the men’s game since Brown reached the zenith of the basketball world in the early ‘80s. Among the ten most prominent coaches for the LSU men, eight were fired. Every coach since Brown has been dismissed by LSU with the exception of McMahon, who has a herculean task to compete at an elite level.
Mulkey is a great coach with four national titles at two universities, and she is more likely when weighing the odds to win another NCAA championship than any LSU coach in any sport.
The obstacles are more plentiful and more intense to reach the pinnacle for Brian Kelly than for Kim Mulkey or Matt McMahon. But basketball is a strong No. 2 sport on campus, and Mulkey is the most covered ladies’ coach in the country. Any controversy amplifies her street cred as a Bad Ass. And Mulkey is not immune to mixing it up with all comers.
Mulkey is poised to dominate her sport with a few breaks here and there. She is the queen of her orbit, and her male cohorts lack her star power and do not possess the strong personality of a Louisiana girl, who was born in Santa Ana, California, but is a tenacious warrior from Tangipahoa Parish.
Until further notice, LSU men’s basketball is an afterthought to the feminine juggernaut directed by Mulkey. Look for her to defy the odds and bring down South Carolina this season and lead LSU to its first SEC women’s title on the court in 17 years.
The only development that elicits more interest than winning is controversy. And Mulkey deftly draws drama into her realm. In 1986, Dale Brown graced the cover of Sports Illustrated with the caption, “Crazy Days at LSU.”
Mulkey is keeping the flame of Daddy Dale alive with her antics and her record.
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