The sparkliest Sweet 16 sideline: Meet Kim Mulkey’s chic LSU coaching staff

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The LSU ladies’s basketball staff arrived in Sacramento on Wednesday for its Sweet 16 matchup towards Duke on Friday and, if all goes based on plan, an Elite Eight recreation Monday.

Also arriving in Sacramento on Wednesday: three packing containers stuffed with outfits — together with one, after all, from Baton Rouge’s Queen of Sparkles clothes retailer — for head coach Kim Mulkey and assistant coach Jennifer Roberts.

Roberts, the staff’s director of participant personnel and affect, is Mulkey’s main stylist for recreation day. It’s her job to “give the people what they want to see,” from Mulkey’s outfits, she mentioned. In different phrases, sparkles. “And if it’s not sparkly,” she mentioned, “something outlandish.”

But search for and down the LSU sideline and you will discover a pattern.

It’s not simply Mulkey who’s dressed to the nines each time LSU takes the court docket, together with her feathers, sequins or daring patterns making her suits must-see Internet content material this time of yr.

Rate @LSUwbkb coach Kim Mulkey’s nationwide championship recreation match ✨ pic.twitter.com/bHIqWgy73W

— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) April 2, 2023

Roberts and her fellow LSU assistants have very a lot leaned into expressing themselves creatively by way of their very own trend, too. Whether it is a matching set worn by Roberts, a plaid or pinstripe go well with from assistant Joe Schwartz or enjoyable sweaters and polos from former LSU star-turned-assistant coach Seimone Augustus, the LSU staff’s wardrobe may simply be essentially the most eclectic within the sport.

“I haven’t missed this year,” Roberts joked. “I will say that.”

LSU’s want to decorate to impress began when Mulkey took the job in 2021, proper across the identical time coaches — notably in males’s faculty basketball — ditched their conventional fits in favor of extra snug school-issued quarter zips within the aftermath of COVID-19.

Mulkey, whom Augustus describes as “always the belle of the ball,” had completely different plans, although.

“When we came to Baton Rouge (from Baylor), Kim was like, ‘We need to make a good impression on these people,’” Roberts mentioned. “’We’re at a new school, (we’re) a new staff, we need to make a good impression.’ Little did we know that this impression, it starts with Kim, all the blazers and all the sparkles and all the things, it created a craze. A legit craze.

“We have people that will come to the games to see what Kim is wearing.”

Each assistant coach has his or her particular person course of in terms of choosing out outfits, however there may be one frequent thread: None (by selection) have stylists. Instead, it is all about curating a selected look to match a private model.

For Roberts, who could also be most recognizable for the new pink matching set she wore in LSU’s 2023 Sweet 16 within the staff’s run as much as a nationwide title, it is all about intestine feeling.

“I don’t know what I’m gonna feel like that day, and I’ve done this before, like an outfit to wear in a game or on the road, I’ll put it on and then I’m like, ‘I hate this.’ Or ‘I’m just not feeling this,’” she mentioned. “So I always bring options.”

Schwartz, who performed at Texas from 2014-2018, is thought for his fits. He went with plaid fits within the first two rounds of the match however has pinstripes deliberate for this weekend in Sacramento. He likes to attract inspiration from coaches he has admired over time, together with Alabama’s Wimp Sanderson, whom his mom labored for when Sanderson was the boys’s basketball coach from 1980-1992 and routinely donned sport coats, neck ties and pleated khakis.

“So that’s what I grew up watching,” mentioned Schwartz, who added he outlets year-round to maintain a watch out for potential outfits. “I played for Shaka Smart, … and it was in an era that (dressing up was) what coaches were known for. Jay Wright at Villanova, loved his fashion. He was big on the pinstripe suits.”

Augustus, the beginner of the group, got here to her alma mater forward of final season, and joked she needed to up her recreation after sporting principally staff gear as a WNBA assistant for the Los Angeles Sparks.

An enormous a part of her strategy is discovering garments that match her type, however which might be additionally inexpensive sufficient in order that when followers ask her the place they’re from — and so they often do — she will be able to ship them straight to a supply that will not break the financial institution. Some of your favorites? The LSU bookstore, the LSU alumni heart and Fanatics.

“I was so used to being on the W(NBA) side where you just wear team-issued gear, and I was like, ‘Oh my Gah, I haven’t been shopping in years, so now I’ve got to put outfits together, figure out my closet, put pieces together, which is fun,” she mentioned. “I’m trying. But it’s definitely sparked a creativity within myself, figuring (out) what my fashion is now. I’m 40-something years old, who am I, what do I look like?”

Augustus joked that there are not any harsher critics of the LSU assistants’ decisions than the gamers themselves, who prefer to grade coaches based mostly on how a lot they like (or dislike) the outfits.

Augustus, who admitted she bought one F for a flop towards Texas A&M, mentioned her favourite outfit got here on Valentine’s Day, when she rocked a black sweater with a big crimson coronary heart and shiny crimson matching footwear. Roberts is a fan of the military inexperienced bomber jacket matching set she wore within the first spherical of the match. And Schwartz picked the customized footwear coaches wore in December that have been designed by youngsters from Our Lady of the Lake Children’s Hospital, an effort he helped coordinate, as his favourite trend second of the season.

“Coach (Mulkey) talks about dressing nice and being presentable and kind of going out of his way to impress other people,” he mentioned. “And so it’s kind of fun now. Game by game, just to figure out what you want to wear. I know a lot of people look into that and it has tricked down to the staff.

“We all get it from Coach. When your boss clothes like that, you do not wish to be slacking.”

Mulkey said she doesn’t pay much attention to what her assistants are wearing but always hopes they dress professionally.

Critical opinions aside, LSU players very much do care, though.

“I love it,” said freshman forward Grace Knox. “I really feel like, actually, it will get us sort of within the zone for the sport. I do know that sounds bizarre, however I really feel like when all people’s put collectively on the bench, it simply sort of — at the least for me — I feel it sort of represents LSU.”

And so the style present will proceed for LSU because the nation’s top-scoring offense takes the ground once more Friday, turning the sideline right into a runway. Bring on the entire feathers, sequins, colours, textures, patterns and glitter. Except for perhaps Bob Starkey, Mulkey’s 66-year-old longtime assistant who retains issues a bit extra… conventional. Star guard Flau’jae Johnson joked he is the best-dressed of the bunch.

“When you think of LSU women’s basketball, you think of fashion, but you also think of style of play,” Schwartz mentioned. “It’s not just style on the sideline. … It’s all been fun.”