Kim Mulkey jokingly pleads for Dawn Staley bench depth after South Carolina-LSU game – Sports Illustrated

Kim Mulkey’s LSU Tigers suffered their first loss of the 2024-25 NCAA season on Friday, falling to Dawn Staley and the South Carolina Gamecocks 66-56.

While the Tigers put forth a solid effort on South Carolina’s home court, the superior depth the defending national champions have is what ultimately helped them pull away with the victory.

This is evidenced by the jarring contrast in bench production between the two teams. The Gamecocks had 31 of their 66 points come from their bench, while the Tigers managed just 2 of theirs.

Mulkey mentioned Staley having the upper hand in terms of roster depth multiple times during his postgame press conference.

“Well you’ve got 10 All-Americans on McDonald. Flip a coin, you can play any of them you want,” Mulkey said when asked about Staley, who has eight players who have played at least 15 minutes, on the LSU Tigers on Tigerbait YouTube channel. “I don’t have that. I have to go with what I have, what I feel in my gut … you have so much, who are you going to stop? Pick your poison.”

A little later in the scrimmage, Mulkey was asked if he thought he needed to be able to count on more than three players if he was going to beat South Carolina in the future.

“Good that you would like to have more,” said Mulkey. “But our bench wasn’t very productive tonight and it’s been very good all year. But yeah, you’d like to have more of those three.

“I call Dawn and tell her to send me some of the ones she’s not playing,” Mulkey added. “I don’t think she will.”

Mulkey certainly isn’t in that respect, as any other college basketball coach in the country would rather have the kind of depth Staley has on Staley’s roster.