Baylor basketball coach blasts critics of school's sexual-assault scandal

WACO, TX (KTRK) -- Baylor women's basketball coach Kim Mulkey gave a controversial speech on Saturday defending the university in an ongoing sexual assault scandal.

After the women's team clinched the Big 12 regular season title on Saturday, Mulkey used her postgame speech to defend her school.

She said, "If somebody is around you and they ever say 'I will never send my daughter to Baylor,' you knock them right in the face...because these kids are on this campus. I work here. My daughter went to school here. And it's the best damn school in America."

KXXV reports that Mulkey's remarks were met with cheers.

The scandal, which has resulted in a lawsuit alleging that football players committed 52 sexual assaults over a four-year period, has cost Art Briles his job as football coach and brought about the exit of Ken Starr as the school's president and law professor, the athletic director and the Title IX coordinator.

Mulkey explained in the postgame news conference that she was "just tired of hearing" about the school's problems.

"I'm tired of people talking on it on a national scale that don't know what they're talking about," she said after the Bears beat Texas Tech. "If they didn't sit in those meetings and they weren't a part of the investigation, you're repeating things that you heard. It's over. It's done."

"I'm tired of hearing it. This is a great institution. The problems that we have at Baylor are no different than the problems at any other school in America. Period. Move on. Find another story to write."

On Sunday, Mulkey defended her words, telling espnW she "didn't think about what she was going to say" before speaking to the crowd, but her "point was 'Please don't paint, with a broad brush, the women at Baylor.' "

In January, a former Baylor University student who says she was raped by two football players filed a federal lawsuit Friday against the school that alleges there were dozens more assaults of women involving other players.

Last spring, an independent investigation found that athletic department leadership left women on the Baptist school's campus at risk by discouraging victims from reporting assaults and suppressing accusations against Bears players.

That investigation, conducted by a law firm hired by Baylor's board of regents, found 19 players accused of domestic or sexual assault by 17 women.