South Carolina reporter responds after Kim Mulkey called out media for eating

On Saturday, the 3-seed LSU Tigers women’s basketball team lost to the 2-seed Texas Longhorns in the SEC Tournament semifinals.

Part of the reason might be due to head coach Kim Mulkey’s absence for most of the week dealing with a personal matter. But Mulkey made several reporters’ personal matters extremely public during the press conference after the loss.

During her post-game press conference, Mulkey spied several reporters off to the side and pondered if they were here to get some quotes or a quick meal.

“Are those media over there, or are they just eatin’?” asked Mulkey while pointing toward the media members.

One of the reporters in that group was Lulu Kesin of the Greenville News, who covers South Carolina women’s basketball and football. As such, she was in the building to cover the Gamecocks, not the Tigers, so she wasn’t actively involved in the press conference. So imagine her surprise when she got called out while trying to throw down a couple of mozzarella sticks in between games.

for context this is how far away I was, I was NOT sitting in the press conference eating pic.twitter.com/GOdQTyq7Fk

— Lulu Kesin (@LuluKesin) March 9, 2025

Anyone who spent any time in post-game press areas will tell you that it’s incredibly common for everything to be jammed together haphazardly, so it’s not uncommon to see a press conference right next to the catering areas.

Also, judging by Kesin’s photo, it seems pretty apparent she and those around her are not there to listen to Mulkey.

You can probably say that Mulkey was just being tongue-in-cheek or trying to make a joke, but given her history with the media, it’s hard to give her the benefit of the doubt that she wasn’t trying to get a dig in, too.

One thing we do know is that the mozzarella sticks were delicious!