Kim Mulkey shares how LSU players reacted to Seimone Augustus' hiring

Seimone Augustus is returning home to Baton Rouge after nearly two decades to join Kim Mulkey’s staff at LSU for the 2024-25 season.

Augustus brings with her a wealth of knowledge, experience — and most importantly — success everywhere that she’s gone. Mulkey said that she can’t wait for her players to learn under Augustus’ guide this summer.

“The players learned through a zoom call the night before it was announced. And it was kind of a strange zoom,” Mulkey said during Augustus’ re-introductory press conference. “They were quiet and I don’t know if they were quiet because I don’t do Zoom calls and they were thinking ‘How is Coach doing this, who’s doing this for her?’ Or if they were in awe. Some of them clapped and some of them smiled, but it was just — it was really quiet and I thought that was not so typical of my team, so maybe they’re just waiting to see her in person.”

Regardless of initial reactions, but Augustus is as good of a model as anyone could follow at LSU, especially considering there’s a statue of her outside the arena and her jersey is in the rafters of the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.

In college, she averaged 19.3 points, 5.2 rebounds, a pair of assists, and 1.4 steals while shooting 54.4%. That made her a two-time winner of the AP Player of the Year, the Naismith Award, and the Wooden Award. She was also a four-time AP All-American along with several other conference and national awards.

From there, Augustus would be the No. 1 pick during the 2006 WNBA Draft. That started a 15-year professional career that would result in her becoming a Hall of Famer and one of the most successful WNBA players of the 2010s.

She played for the Minnesota Lynx from 2006 through 2019 before spending her final season with the Los Angeles Sparks in 2020. She won four WNBA Championships during her career, including eight All-Star appearances and was named to the WNBA 25th Anniversary team in 2021. She also won three Olympic gold medals for the U.S. National Team during that span.

It’s also worth noting that Augustus’ Lynx squads are the ones that Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark grew up watching as her favorite team.

This isn’t Augustus’ first coaching gig, either. After retiring from her playing career following her lone season for the Sparks, she remaining in LA from 2021-22 as an assistant for the team.

Now, she returns to Baton Rouge to help lead the Tigers to a potential second national championship in three seasons.