Not surprised to see this thread. I was going to start one if it wasn't present. I saw last night as different comments from what Kim has said in the past. First off, in both interviews (first with Dales only for TV, and then with Brenda for the arena) when Kim was asked the question of what this meant, her pause in answering was prolonged and deafening. You could see she was about to cry in coming up with an answer. Now, this could be just from the emotion of the moment, but she has been emotional in the past before and we (at least I) have not seen the hesitancy to answer and the quivering in her speech in beginning the answer. This just seemed different.
Reasons could be anything as have been proposed in this thread. It could be a lurking medical situation that she has not made public. It could be the emotion of her loss (first grandchild), the emotion of team members' losses, or because of things she has knowledge of concerning friends or family. Or, it could be just us misreading. It just seems to me it is not the usual we have seen or heard in the past, even though some of the words have been the same. She did say that Baylor appreciated WBB, so it likely is not something coming from the administration (if there is anything to last night's interviews at all). However, if we find anything coming from Pat Neff that is causing her grief, my support of Baylor will cease in its entirety at that point. I'm tired of these people treating Baylor as their personal toy causing pain for everyone else that has no control over the situation (us, for example).
Regardless of what meaning, if any at all, last night's comments play out in the near future, one thing she said is undeniably true. Don't take this success for granted. Many people took the football success for granted. The football board had Baylor winning multiple championships for as far as the eye could see and nothing would change it. That balloon popped at the drop of a pin.
At some point Baylor will have to hire someone else to be the head coach of the women's basketball program. That is a fact of life. Whether Baylor remains an elite program will depend on that hire. There are not even a handful of today's elite WBB programs, IMO, that will not take a serious hit on the retirement of their present coach, and that includes UConn. Whether the hit is just temporary or long-lasting will depend on the hire. But for just a few schools it will be a prove-it mentality to recruits for at least 2 or 3 years and during that time there is going to be a drop-off.
WBB recruits are coming to most of these elite programs because of the coach, not the school. The only two elite WBB schools that I can think of right now where the school's reputation, academics or status might be enough to avoid a drop-off is Stanford and Notre Dame. I'd throw Tennessee into that group, if not for what they have already done to themselves. A "name" coach might be able to resurrect it, if done quickly, but they have fallen way off. If Geno is not in Storrs, who really wants to go to school at UConn with an unproven coach, at least for their standards? And for as most of us having long ties to Baylor and believe in its heritage, we are winning WBB championships because of Kim Mulkey, not because of the name on the jersey. Georgia was great for years. Landers retired and Georgia is a bottom feeder in the SEC. That is only one example there are many more (Duke, North Carolina, and Texas and TT in our conference).
So, instead of complaining about all the FFs of which we have fallen short, celebrate in what we have done and where we are. My hope is that when Kim hangs it up, she (assuming she wants to) picks her replacement because I trust her to know who has the best chance to follow up her success. And that the school doesn't try to penny pinch like UT did with Aston. We will have one chance to get this right when the time comes. We should expect an initial fall-off. But if that hire is wrong, we may never get back.
Sorry for the length. It is just sad to even think about the day CKM is not on that sideline whether it is next year, 5 years, or 10 years. It just seemed to me that last night was different.