Why Dawn Staley vs Kim Mulkey is women's basketball's next great rivalry | Adams
The Tennessee-Connecticut rivalry advanced and popularized women’s college basketball in the 1990s and 2000s. The two programs benefitted even more than the sport.
UT won eight national championships under coach Pat Summitt. The Huskies have won 11 under Geno Auriemma.
Summitt and Auriemma didn’t need a rivalry of this proportion to win championships. But it helped.
The programs repeatedly provoked and prodded each other to the top. UConn knew it had to be good enough to beat Tennessee to win a national title. Likewise, UConn was Tennessee’s championship barometer.
The teams resumed their rivalry three years ago, but it’s a pale imitation of the original. The original wasn’t just UConn vs. Tennessee. It was Summitt vs. Geno, the game’s two greatest coaches.
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Summitt’s historic career was cut short by early-onset Alzheimer’s. She died in 2016, four years after she coached her last game.
Auriemma is still at it, but UConn has been replaced at the top of the sport. You can see for yourself this week in Greenville, South Carolina, when South Carolina takes the floor Friday in the SEC Tournament.
The Gamecocks are the defending national champions and rarely have failed to look the part. Coach Dawn Staley’s team has dominated most opponents the way Summitt’s and Auriemma’s best teams once routinely overwhelmed the competition.
The tournament could bring more of the same. Never mind that South Carolina slipped against Kentucky in last year’s tournament. This team is better and deeper. All it lacks is a comparable rival.
Enter: Kim Mulkey.
Mulkey’s second LSU team has lost only to South Carolina. It’s a top-five team. But don’t get the wrong idea. It doesn’t have the depth of talent to challenge the Gamecocks for SEC supremacy. In fact, I wouldn’t bet on it advancing as far as the tournament’s championship game.
But Mulkey’s track record tells you it eventually will advance beyond a tournament championship game. Mulkey won three national championships at Baylor. And she’s 53-7 in two seasons at LSU with the SEC and NCAA tournaments yet to come. In the previous six seasons under coach Nikki Fargas, the Tigers won 94 games.
That’s how sudden and powerful Mulkey’s impact has been. Her effect should increase with each recruiting class and every transfer who's drawn to a coach with a great track record for player development.
No matter how much Mulkey has won, she’s driven to win more. Auriemma is the same way. So was Summitt. Only a disease could stop her.
Even if Staley should win back-to-back national championships, does anyone think she wouldn't be even more motivated to win three in a row, just as Summitt once did? And if she could pull that off, she would be gung-ho to win four straight, just as Auriemma once did.
Other programs have won national championships since the UT-UConn rivalry waned and the Huskies’ dominance declined. But nothing has replaced that rivalry.
South Carolina vs. LSU has that kind of potential. They have championship coaches who recruit relentlessly. Proximity could help. Since they’re in the same conference, they will play regularly.
And one day, they should be playing for more than a conference championship.
John Adams is a senior columnist. He may be reached at 865-342-6284 or john.adams@knoxnews.com. Follow him at: twitter.com/johnadamskns.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Dawn Staley vs Kim Mulkey is women's basketball's next great rivalry
