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Kim Mulkey is taking a hands-off approach when it comes to advising stars Angel Reese and Hailey Van Lith on the WNBA Draft. She believes that it’s their decision to make, and theirs alone.
Each transferred into the LSU program, reportedly making intentions clear on how long they planned to stay. Both players are seniors but have the 2020 COVID year in their back pocket.
Mulkey won’t try to convince them to stick around. Here’s what she had to say on the topic earlier this week:
“Angel said when she came here, she’d stay two years, and Hailey said she’d stay one. I’m just not the kind of coach to sit people down and influence them on what agents to pick or talk about what they want to do.
“They surely know they have the COVID year to come back, and they would be more than welcome, but I try to stay away from having any kind of influential conversations… They made it perfectly clear what they wanted to do.”
Kim Mulkey is here.
I asked her about conversations she might would have with Angel Reese and Hailey Van Lith about their impending decisions to stay or go to WNBA.
Her answer:#LSU pic.twitter.com/dbO5DuAW4c
— Cory Diaz (@ByCoryDiaz) February 27, 2024
Reese came over from Maryland after her sophomore season and helped the Tigers win a national title the following year. Van Lith was at Louisville for three seasons before making the move ahead of the 2023-24 campaign.
Both are projected to be selected in the top 10 of the upcoming WNBA Draft should they declare.
While that draft status remains high, so too do NIL opportunities in Baton Rouge. Reese, in particular, is ranked by On3’s NIL tracker as being the 7th-most profitable athlete in all of sports. She is the top women’s college basketball earner at $1.7M annually.
Van Lith comes in at $563K, with LSU placing four female athletes in the Women’s Top 10 NIL valuations.
According to USA Today, that would far outweigh the average salary of a first-round pick.
With those numbers alone, one would think Kim Mulkey has a leg to stand on in regard to laying out a plan to stay at LSU. It appears she has no interest in doing so.