DALLAS — Kim Mulkey pumped two cotton candy-colored sleeves, grabbed a grandchild by the hand and sauntered off the court as Garth Brooks serenaded the American Airlines Center from the loudspeakers high in the rafters.
You can imagine the song they picked after LSU came back from near oblivion in the third quarter to beat Virginia Tech 79-72 in their Women’s Final Four first national semifinal Friday night.
You think Samantha is feeling fine after this win? I guarantee you, the girl from Tickfaw sure is.
This can’t be happening. This can’t have happened this soon.
It may seem surreal, but this is as real as it gets.
LSU is in the national championship game.
History was made here, just about 90 minutes north of where Mulkey built a dynasty at Baylor. History was made amid Mulkey’s outlandish outfits, Angel Reese’s single leg sleeves, Flau’jae Johnson’s freestyle rapping and Alexis Morris’ icy glare that would have made the actual Lex Luthor say, “I like that look.”
Morris — the Beaumont, Texas, native by way of Baylor and Rutgers and Texas A&M — said for weeks that she wanted to have her senior night not at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center but in her home state.
No senior can go further than this. On Sunday afternoon here in Big D, she will have her wish.
Will it be the ultimate wish of a national championship, something that eluded LSU greats such as Seimone Augustus and Sylvia Fowles and Temeka Johnson in their five straight Final Four runs? Don’t want to write something foolish like it doesn’t matter, because it all matters when you get this far.
But this LSU team is playing with house money at this point. The Tigers, now 33-2, have gone on an all-time heater at college basketball’s craps table when no one thought they could.
Remember, this team lost four starters from last year’s 26-6 team that bowed out in the second round of the NCAA tournament. Mulkey mixed nine newcomers with Morris and a couple of reserves to cook up an amazing, surprising gumbo that even has the oil-moneyed high rollers along Turtle Creek here saying, “Let me try some of that.”
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