BATON ROUGE -Kim Mulkey’s memories of Pat Summitt go back to her playing days at Louisiana Tech, and the games the Lady Techsters won each time they played Tennessee and the legendary women's basketball coach.
Which is to say every game.
But for Mulkey, who takes No. 8 LSU (24-4, 12-3 SEC)to No. 14 Tennessee(22-6, 11-4) on Sunday (1 p.m. CT, ESPN2) in her first season as coach of the Tigers after 21 years and three national championships at Baylor, it’s a moment not long before the 1984 Summer Olympics that remains etched in her mind.
Summitt was the coach andMulkey apoint guard as the United States prepped overseas for the Los Angeles Games.
JOHN ADAMS:LSU's Kim Mulkey is just what Tennessee Lady Vols basketball didn't need — another nemesis
DAWN STALEY:If Nikki Fargas got Kim Mulkey's LSU support, she might still be there
LONG STORY:The tale of LSU coach Kim Mulkey and a squirrel from Pascagoula
“I’m starting. I’m doing great,” Mulkey said. “And we go to Taipei, Taiwan, before the Olympics, and I wake up and can’t walk.”
Mulkey had a stress fracture in the top of her foot.
“So immediately my thought was, ‘I’ve worked all my life, and now they’re gonna have to pick up an alternate,’ ” Mulkey said.
“I remember (Summitt) calling me (into) her room, and being that she was a player at one time, I know that she just knew what I was thinking.”
Summitt – who started coaching Tennessee in 1974, fresh off her senior season playing at UT Martin – did know.
But she wasn’t about to cut the point guard from Tickfaw, Louisiana, just because she was hurt.
“She just comforted me,” Mulkey said, “and said, ‘I will not pick up an alternate. You’ve earned the right to be on this team – and the doctors tell me in four weeks you’ll be good to go.”
She was.
Mulkey averaged 5.3 points per game, and the Americans won gold.
“That was the first time I really had a one-on-one with her,” Mulkey said.
Kim Mulkey had doubts
Over the ensuing three-plus decades until Summitt's death in 2016, Mulkey crossed paths with her old Olympics coach time and time again.
Like the time she was still working as an assistant under Leon Barmore at Louisiana Tech, long before leading Baylor.
Summitt already had a son, Tyler. Mulkey, consumed by doubts, was pregnant with her daughter Makenzie.
“I was like, ‘Can I do this? Can I really do this and be a good mother, too?’ '' said Mulkey, who remembers seeing Summitt before the Lady Vols played Louisiana Tech in Ruston.
“I kind of cornered her before their practice started and I said, ‘Help me. Tell me how I can do this. How can I make this work? She again comforted me, and she told me that it can be done. And she told me all the things she did, to get help as a mother and be a very good coach.”
WhenSummitt filed for divorce in 2007, she telephoned Mulkey, who had split with her husband a year earlier.
“She said, ‘I need your help,’ ” Mulkey said.
“Well, I thought to myself, ‘Wow. Pat Summitt is calling me about her divorce and (to) help her and walk her through what to expect and how to handle it with the children.
“That,” Mulkey added, “was the kind of relationship I had with her.”
Pat Summitt's lastgame
Summitt was Mulkey’s role model. She was her mentor. And, toward the end, Summitt was the one needing comfort.
Before it came to that, though, Summitt had a final game to coach.
It was March 26, 2012. Baylor was playing Tennessee in an NCAA Tournament Elite Eight matchup at Des Moines, Iowa.
In August 2011, Summitt had been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’sand would step down following the season.
Baylor beat Tennessee 77-58. Two games later, its 40-0 national championship season was complete.
“I’ll never forget that press conference (in Iowa),” Mulkey said.
“It was a bittersweet moment, because while we were happy I just realized (Summitt) wasn’t (ever) going to coach again.”
The final visit
About four years later, in 2016, LSU’s baseball team traveled to play Tennessee.
Mulkey flew to Knoxville to watch her son,Kramer Robertson, who was an infielder with the Tigers.
“He bugged me all that morning, ‘Mom, go see Pat. Go see Pat,’ ” Mulkey said. “At that time she was in a (care) facility, and I didn’t want to go see her.
“I knew where she was health-wise, and I just refused to go see her. And he just wouldn’t let up. And something that morning just told me, ‘Go.’ ”
Mulkey went.
When Summitt was brought out, she – fittingly for someone who spent most of a lifetime in a gym – was drinking, Mulkey will never forget either, a purple Gatorade.
“I just thought, ‘That’s so Pat,’ ” Mulkey said.
The visit, like so many in similar circ*mstances, was difficult.
But beautiful, too.
“It was just touching,” Mulkey said. “All I kept telling her was, ‘I love ya.’ And she would repeat it.
“Four weeks later I was awakened by a phone call before daylight that she had passed away.”
After Summitt’s 1,098 career victories, an Olympic silver medal playing in 1976, her Olympic win coaching in ’84, no losing seasons and eight national championships at Tennessee, the end had come for one of two women drawn together by so many bonds.
“There’ll never be another one like her,” Mulkey said. “Ever.
“I don’t care how many championships anybody wins. She has done more for this sport than most people really know, and I was blessed to have been a part of her life – although a very small part. And she was a very big part of my life.”
