LSU, Kim Mulkey win Tigers’ first women’s national championship over Iowa, Caitlin Clark

The women’s Final Four was highlighted by dominant performances all weekend from the nation’s best players. Forty-one points from Caitlin Clark in the semifinals. An Angel Reese record-setting double-double against Virginia Tech.

But both coaches in Sunday’s national championship said it would come down to those stars’ supporting casts.

They were right.

“They won the game for us,” LSU head coach Kim Mulkey of her bench postgame. “The game was won in the second quarter.”

LSU graduate transfer guard Jasmine Carson carried her team to its first national championship in program history in a 102-85 win over No. 2 Iowa (31-7), setting a record for most points by an individual team in a championship game. LSU (34-2) became third three-seed ever to win the title and first since 1997.

Carson, the team’s sixth woman, had scored just 11 points in the tournament entering Sunday’s contest. On the game’s biggest stage in the most important game of her career, she scored 22 points, just four shy of her career high.

“I’ve been working hard my whole life,” Carson said. “I just let it all out. I didn’t have nothing to lose. This was the last game of my college career, and I ended it the right way.”

LSU found itself in a tight game with Iowa early, but with three of its starters getting charged with two fouls by the first few moments of the second quarter, head coach Kim Mulkey had to turn to her bench to deliver while starters Angel Reese, Alexis Morris and Kateri Poole took a seat in the second.

Enter Carson, a West Virginia transfer, who started hot, hitting her first seven shots and five from three. She led a monster quarter in which LSU broke out to a 17-point lead at halftime. The Tigers shot an unbelievable 75% from 3-point range in the first half.

“Jasmine may be the second-best pure shooter that I’ve ever coached in my career,” Mulkey said. She can just light it up.”

Iowa star guard Clark started the game hot with 14 points in the first quarter, including four made 3s. She was charged with her third foul midway through the second and was subbed out as a result.

The referees called a tournament-record 37 fouls in the contest.

“It’s very frustrating because I didn’t even feel like I could talk to them,” Bluder said of the refs. “They wouldn’t listen. That’s what’s frustrating. It felt like a conversation couldn’t be had.”

In addition to Carson, Last-Tear Poa and DeSoto alum Sa’Myah Smith delivered key minutes off the bench in the second quarter. LSU’s bench outscored Iowa’s 30 to 8.

“This wasn’t about me,” Reese said. “This was all about the supporting cast. Everybody has played a role all season. They stepped up.”

The starters for both sides re-entered at the start of the third, and LSU cooled off slightly. Iowa was able to cut the LSU lead to eight after a 15-2 run in which Clark hit two 3s and tied the national championship game record for most made 3-pointers at six. She broke the record later in the quarter, passing Stanford’s Katy Steding, who set the record in 1990.

Clark finished with a game-high 30 points. Her fellow guard Gabbie Marshall, who was scoreless in the semifinal against South Carolina, shot 3-for-5 for 12 points. Center Monika Czinano added 13 points, six rebounds, three assists, three steals and a block despite fouling out with 6:25 remaining, and Kate Martin had 13 as well.

As Iowa chipped away at the lead, it was LSU’s post players that offered the biggest contributions to keep the game out of reach. Forward LaDazhia Williams and Reese combined for 35 points and 15 rebounds. Five LSU players scored in double figures. Alexis Morris scored 15 of her 21 in the final 10 minutes. She also played a key role in limiting Clark, who was coming off back-to-back 41-point games.

Carson was held to one point in the second half, but she broke a title game record for 3-point percentage at 83.3%, passing Tennessee’s Abby Conklin, who shot 80% from deep in 1996.

Sunday’s championship lived up to the hype that surrounded this weekend’s tournament in Dallas, as a sellout crowd of 19,482 packed American Airlines Center and set an attendance record for the whole weekend.

“In my five years here, I’ve seen the game grow in a way I never thought it could,” Clark said. “This is the game we love, and seeing it get the recognition it deserves is super rewarding. It’s about time women’s basketball gets this kind of viewership, and it can only go up.”

A night full of records culminated with Mulkey securing her sixth championship as a player or coach and fourth as a head coach, now placing her in sole possession of third place for most championships by a women’s head coach. After 21 years at Baylor, she led LSU to the national title in just her second season with the program with nine new players on her roster.

“That’s what I came home to do,” Mulkey said.