GREENVILLE, S.C. — It wasn’t the first time and it probably won’t be the last, but on Friday night, Bob Starkey stood in as the head coach of LSU’s women’s basketball team and coached the Tigers to a win over Florida in the quarterfinals of the SEC Tournament.
LSU head coach Kim Mulkey was there, but for most of the night she sat quietly in the middle of the bench while it was Starkey who spent the majority of the evening on his feet, calling out plays, assignments and pointers to players.
Mulkey was away from the team for most of the week, grieving and dealing with what she called an “unexpected death” in her family. Mulkey didn’t arrive to the SEC Tournament until Friday and left the duties of preparing the team to Starkey.
But she knew the Tigers were in good hands. With Starkey in charge, she didn’t have to worry about her basketball team in a tumultuous time.
“He had our team ready to play. They responded to him,” Mulkey said. “My week was awful. My mind still isn’t good… I was where I was supposed to be.”
In LSU’s locker room in the bowels of Bon Secours Wellness Arena, the Tigers soaked Starkey with water in celebration of the the postseason win that the 65-year-old guided them to. But Starkey, ever humble, deflected the credit.
“This was a Coach Mulkey win,” Starkey said. “I just got to stand up a little bit more than I usually do.”
Sitting next to him on a stage in the postgame press conference, Mulkey showered Starkey with praise. She went several steps further than typical compliments, strongly advocating for him to be enshrined.
“This man deserves to be in the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame,” Mulkey began. “I’ve been begging ‘em for years. We have two associate head coaches that are in the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame, but not either one of them ever took a team on an interim basis to a Final Four. This man has done that. He’s worked for Sue Gunter, he’s worked for (Van) Chancellor, he’s worked for tons of coaches.
“For me to go take care of something personal for an entire week… A lot of coaches are not blessed to have a staff with a Bob Starkey on it. Why he is not already in the Hall of Fame is beyond me.”
“It’s the unexpected deaths that throw you for a loop & I was where I was supposed to be.” -Kim Mulkey
Coach Mulkey very pleased with her team’s performance vs Florida, despite being away from them for a week. Bob Starkey stepped in as HC & had LSU ready to go.@LSUwbkb… pic.twitter.com/NhyS4YsOnD
— Chessa Bouche (@chessabouche) March 8, 2025
Mulkey isn’t wrong here. One could make the case that no assistant coach has had a career as decorated as Starkey’s.
A native of Charleston, West Virginia, Starkey arrived at LSU in 1990 and began working as assistant coach on Dale Brown’s staff and got to coach Shaquille O’Neal. The LSU men won an SEC title and twice went to the second round of the NCAA Tournament with Starkey on the bench.
Then he moved over to women’s basketball, where he has coached for nearly three decades. In its history as a women’s basketball program, LSU has been to six Final Fours and Starkey was part of every one of them. The Tigers have gone to NCAA Tournaments in 15 of the 16 years that Starkey has been on the Tigers’ staff under various head coaches. He was also on staff for all three of their SEC regular season titles. And Starkey also coached the three greatest players to ever come through LSU: Seimone Augustus, Sylvia Fowles and Angel Reese.
Starkey also left LSU for a bit and had success elsewhere. Working under Gary Blair at Texas A&M, Starkey helped the Aggies go to eight NCAA Tournaments and win an SEC regular season title.
But circling back to the part of Starkey’s resume that Mulkey focused on, what he did in 2007 remains wildly impressive. When then-head coach Pokey Chatman resigned just days before March Madness began, Starkey took the reins of the program and guided the Tigers to a fourth consecutive Final Four berth. During that NCAA Tournament run, Starkey’s LSU teams beat Mike Carey’s West Virginia, Sue Semrau’s Florida State and Geno Auriemma’s UConn before falling to C. Vivian Stringer’s Rutgers.
Starkey said at the time that he didn’t want to become LSU’s head coach and instead remained on-staff when Van Chancellor got the job.
The Division I women’s college basketball teams that Starkey has been on staff for have a combined overall record of 663-235, a winning percentage of 73.8.
When Starkey’s career is considered in total — when you look at the banners he’s helped raise, the teams he’s coached to NCAA Tournaments and beyond, the great coaches that reaped the benefits of having him on staff, and the legendary players he recruited and molded — it’s difficult to argue with Mulkey. It’s rare for assistant coaches to be admitted to halls of fame, but if anyone has a resume worthy of entry, it’s Starkey.
And if Starkey is enshrined some day, there might not be a coach in the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame more modest than him.
“I’ve been blessed on these few times where I had to take over to have a really, really good team,” Starkey said. “The better the players, the better the coach. Coach Mulkey has given me the blueprint.”
