Shannon Sharpe and Kim Mulkey (Photos via Getty Images)
Shannon Sharpe had a bone to pick with Kim Mulkey.
The LSU Tigers women’s basketball team lost against Iowa in their Elite Eight matchup in the March Madness NCAA tournament. Tigers lost 94-87 against a powerful Hawkeyes team led by Caitlin Clark, widely considered the greatest shooter in NCAA basketball history.
Knowing that information and doing nothing about it was a huge problem for Sharpe.
On Monday, ESPN‘s Shannon Sharpe praised Dawn Staley and the South Carolina Gamecocks for making the necessary coaching adjustments to slow down Caitlin Clark while also taking a shot at LSU’s Kim Mulkey and Hailey Van Lith.
Clark scored 41 points against LSU while being guarded by Hailey Van Lith for much of the game while South Carolina point guard Raven Johnson was the primary defender on Caitlin Clark for most of the time, finishing with four steals in the victory.
“You see the difference between what LSU did and what South Carolina did,” Sharpe said on First Take. “South Carolina put their most athletic player on Caitlin Clark. What did LSU do? Put their least athletic player on Caitlin Clark. And you see the difference. They wore her down.”
Caitlin Clark drained nine 3-pointers in the win over LSU, finishing with 41 points, 7 rebounds, and 12 assists but Kim Mulkey never thought to guard her any differently throughout the contest.
South Carolina did a solid job of not only slowing down Clark’s scoring but also her facilitating to get her teammates involved as Shannon Sharpe further brought up.
“We’ve never seen a player in the women’s game bear more responsibility than Caitlin Clark. She has to score damn near all their points. And she has to facilitate,” Shannon Sharpe said. “And you saw at the end, Raven Johnson was picking her pockets, something we did not see all year long. They wore her down, and as the game got going, she got more and more frustrated because she knew she didn’t have the horses running alongside her that South Carolina did.”
Dawn Staley never panicked when Iowa opened up hot on a 10-0 run and led 20-9 at one point. She also never called a timeout and allowed her players to figure it out.
Shannon Sharpe liked Staley’s approach to letting her team play through tough moments.
“I loved the way Dawn Staley did. [Iowa] raced out to a 10-point lead and everybody said, ‘Dawn, are you going to call timeout?’ Dawn sat there with her Gucci on, ‘Y’all got us in this mess, get us out of it.’ I love the way she coaches and her team came ready to play,” Shannon Sharpe said. “They came ready to avenge what happened last year, and they left no doubt the Lady Gamecocks are the best women’s basketball team in the country.”
Shannon Sharpe Ripped Kim Mulkey On His Podcast For Terrible Coaching
Shannon Sharpe (Photo by Joe Scarnici/Getty Images for The Volume)
During the latest installment of his and Chad Johnson’s “Nightcap with Unc and Ocho” podcast, Sharpe took issue with LSU’s inability to shut down Iowa sharpshooter Caitlin Clark, who finished with 41 points.
“Kim Mulkey did a terrible job at coaching because they did nothing to get the ball out of [Clark’s] hands,” Sharpe said. “Look at how UConn approached [USC guard] Juju Watkins [in the other Elite Eight game Monday]. She got the ball [and] they blitzed her … You mean to tell me, Caitlin Clark, who arguably is one of the greatest shooters in college history, you go under the screen?
