ALBANY, N.Y.: The Los Angeles Times has edited a column it revealed final week in regards to the LSU girls’s basketball crew forward of its sport in opposition to UCLA following criticism from Tigers coach Kim Mulkey, who blasted it as sexist and hurtful.
Mulkey defended her gamers after they have been known as “villains” and “dirty debutantes” in a chunk first revealed Friday that likened the Sweet 16 sport between LSU and UCLA as a battle of excellent versus evil.
“How dare people attack kids like that?” she mentioned Saturday. “You don’t have to like the way we play. You don’t have to like the way we trash talk. You don’t have to like any of that. We’re good with that. But I can’t sit up here as a mother and a grandmother and a leader of young people and allow somebody to say that.”
The Times eliminated these references late Saturday in addition to one evaluating UCLA’s crew to “milk and cookies” and republished the column with a word that mentioned: “A previous version of this commentary did not meet Times editorial standards. It has been updated.”
UCLA coach Cori Close apologized on social media for retweeting the column, saying partly: “I would never want to promote anything that tears down a group of people in our great game.”
Mulkey mentioned Sunday she was solely typically conscious of the response to her feedback a day earlier.
“I had someone say the LA Times updated, rewrote, did something, and they did it at 10:20 last night or 10 something, and I said, OK,” she mentioned. “That was the extent of it.”
Mulkey’s gamers praised her Saturday for letting them be themselves on and off the courtroom, with Angel Reese labeling herself and her teammates as “good villains” who’re altering the sport and supporting one another.
Hailey Van Lith informed reporters Sunday that features after they need to take care of bigotry.
“We do have a lot of Black women on this team, and unfortunately, that bias does exist still today, and a lot of the people that are making those comments are being racist towards my teammates,” mentioned Van Lith, who’s white. “I’m in a unique situation where I see with myself, I’ll talk trash and I’ll get a different reaction than if Angel talks trash. I have a duty to my teammates to have their back. Some of the words that were used in that article were very sad and upsetting.”
Mulkey reiterated Sunday that she wouldn’t learn one other newspaper article over which she threatened to file a defamation lawsuit.
She was the topic of a profile revealed Saturday in The Washington Post wherein relations and former gamers are quoted about her persona and the way she runs her basketball program.
Mulkey’s father and sister are quoted as saying they haven’t talked to Mulkey in years whereas others counsel she was uncomfortable at greatest with the LGTBQ+ group, together with a few of her personal gamers.
“The lawyers will review it, and when this season is over, they’ll give me a call and say, this is our next step,” Mulkey mentioned Sunday. “I’m not reading that stuff.”
Days earlier than the story was revealed, Mulkey threatened to sue the newspaper for what she mentioned could be a “hit piece.” Instead, it was a wide-ranging profile that examined each constructive and detrimental features of her life.
After her crew beat UCLA 78-69 on Saturday, she responded with false shock when a reporter informed her the article had come out an hour earlier than the sport began. (She had been requested about it on ESPN earlier than tipoff.)
“Imagine that,” she mentioned. “Must have thought y’all would look at it, get some clicks or be a distraction. No, ma’am, I haven’t read it and I probably won’t read it.”
The profile comes throughout a season when LSU opened the protection of its nationwide title with a stunning loss to Colorado and a vacation match wherein Reese didn’t play due to unspecified “locker-room issues” that Mulkey declined to expose.
Reese made some common references to her psychological well being and never wanting her conduct to be detrimental to the crew.
The Tigers bounced again to have a stable season, shedding within the Southeastern Conference Tournament last to South Carolina. They entered the NCAA Tournament as a No. 3 seed and are attempting to turn out to be the primary back-to-back champions since UConn gained its fourth straight in 2016. LSU will play Caitlin Clark and top-seeded Iowa on Monday in a rematch of final 12 months’s nationwide title sport.
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AP Basketball Writer Doug Feinberg contributed to this report.
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AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-womens-bracket/ and protection: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness
(This story has not been edited by News18 workers and is revealed from a syndicated information company feed – Associated Press)
