LSU Coach Kim Mulkey Slams LA Times Reporter for ‘Sexist’ Article Calling Her Players ‘Dirty Debutantes’
LSU women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey called out the Los Angeles Times for an article describing her players as “dirty debutantes.”
Leading up to UCLA’s NCAA Tournament game against the Tigers, Bruins beat writer Ben Bolch wrote the piece to set the stage. He called it a “reckoning” and that the matchup was between “America’s sweethearts” and “dirty debutantes.”
“Milk and cookies or Louisiana hot sauce?” Bolch wrote. “The team that wants to grow women’s basketball or the one seemingly hellbent on dividing it?”
The backlash was immediate, with some — including LSU guard Hailey Van Lith — calling the description of her team racist.
Hailey van Lith talks about the ‘racist’ remarks originally written in the LA Times preview of the UCLA v. LSU matchup
“Some of the words in that article were very sad and upsetting… calling us basically the ‘dirty debutantes’ that has nothing to do with sports” pic.twitter.com/SxDgHbrspC
— Michael Merrick (@MichaelMerrick_) March 31, 2024
The LA Times later retracted several lines from the article. In the editor’s note, the outlet acknowledged that Bolch’s language was “inappropriate and offensive” and also apologized to LSU’s team.
After Saturday’s game, which the Tigers won 78-69 to advance to the Elite Eight, Mulkey took aim at Bolch’s article.
“You can criticize coaches all you want. That’s our business,” she said during the post-game press conference. “You can come at us and say, ‘You’re the worst coach in America. I hate you. I hate everything about you.’ We expect that. Comes with the territory; but the one thing I’m not gonna let you do — I’m not gonna let you attack young people. And there were some things in this commentary, guys, that you should be offended about as women. It was so sexist and they don’t even know it.
“It was ‘good vs. evil’ in that game today. Evil? Called us ‘dirty debutantes.’ Take your phone out right now and Google ‘dirty debutantes’ and tell me what it says. ‘Dirty debutantes’? Are you kidding me?”
From the East coast to the West coast, LSU seems to be a target, Kim Mulkey is fine with trash talk, but she feels like the LA Times Ben Bolch crossed the line with vilifying her Tiger team in a preview piece of LSU and UCLA. pic.twitter.com/3vJLSNQTVR
— Michael Cauble (@Cauble) March 30, 2024
Aside from other reports about Bolch’s article, a search of the term primarily brings up adult films.
“I’m not gonna let you talk about 18-to-21-year-old kids in that tone,” Mulkey continued. “It was even exist for this reporter to say UCLA was ‘milk and cookies.’ Now, you women sit there and you keep your mouth shut if you want. I’m in the last third of my career, but I’m not gonna let sexism continue; and if you don’t think that’s sexist, then you’re in denial. How dare people attack kids like that?”
