Hoop dreams don’t come easy in Baltimore. When the ball is out on the hardwood for a pickup game and a player delivers an indelible amalgamation of handles before spraying a fadeaway three-pointer from near half court in one of Charm City’s immortal sanctums, it’s not sweet. Instead, the mind-boggling play is fused with trash talk and bragging rights that ignite fierce competition.
The battles provoke the inner beast and desire for respect. Earning fortuity on the court demands the optimum degree of belief in self. Ignore the height and bypass the size and stature. Measure the tenacity and the will to succeed. When it comes to basketball in the heart of Baltimore—a city submerged within the country’s top five metropolises for homicides, along with drug addiction and a massive legion of crime—nothing is given and everything is earned. That credence was instilled into LSU star Angel Reese.
In the summer of 2016 as a freshman at St. Frances Academy—the oldest self-sustaining Black Catholic high school in the country, not far from the Baltimore Juvenile Detention Center and the Baltimore City Correctional Facility—Reese quickly realized the value of being bold and standing up for herself and her teammates. At 14 years old, she was playing in a game at “The Dome,” one of the vaunted courts in east Baltimore, where basketball is woven together with passion and life lessons. “Every game was a dog fight for them,” says the elder Angel, Reese’s mother. “They were top dogs, and there was pressure to win.” The acclaimed semi-indoor court is enclosed by a series of gates. As Reese remembers it, there were fiery exchanges with the opposition. “You have to be who you are and not be apologetic about it,” she says. The crowded venue included droves of fans endlessly banging on the fences, forcing officials to stop the game.
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Reese, who had skyrocketed to 6’3'' after two growth spurts ahead of her freshman year, didn’t have a problem with boasting her talent on the court. But she also didn’t see any issues with meshing her ingenuity on the hardwood with trash talk and banter. After all, her little brother, Julian—who is 13 months younger but towers over her as a 6'9'' forward and one of four players who averages double-figure point totals at Maryland—can do it. Why can’t she? “I don’t let anybody dictate how and who I am,” Reese says. “I never wanted to think I can’t do what Julian does. The trash talk, he kind of put that in me.”
Seven years later, it all serves as motive in the brewing of a Baltimore prodigy—infused with an animated personality and brassy core—as a powerful force of nature, running the baselines in front of more than 13,200 discordant fans inside the Pete Maravich Center, or as longtime ESPN college basketball broadcaster Dick Vitale once named “The Deaf Dome.” She’s LSU’s Bayou Barbie in a Baton Rouge battleground that has quickly become the “City of Angel.” She stands out on the court—and not just because of her long flowing hair, bold eyelashes and one-leg sleeve. She is a beast. She’s constantly surveying the ball, completing acrobatic finishes and putbacks around the rim, vaulting over her defender for rebounds like former Tigers great and WNBA legend Sylvia Fowles did for her teammates. She’s patrolling the paint with authority, snatching ferocious blocks in mid air like another LSU star and Naismith Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal, the WNBA’s Margo Dydek or Hall of Famer Dikembe Mutombo.
Instead of using the iconic Mutombo finger wag, Reese has her own gestures—she dances, motions the “finger lickin’ good” tag or stares you down while delivering spicy on-court vernacular that might result in a technical foul, like it did after she swatted Arkansas’s Samara Spencer layup attempt while holding her shoe in her hand back in January. It sent fans inside the PMAC into a frenzy but struck a chord across social media after the undefeated Tigers’ 19th win of the season. “[The block] wasn’t intended to be anything,” she adds. But after asking the official to wait to put her shoe on, the game kept flowing, business as usual, and she protected her sovereign territory. “She’s very unapologetic, and sometimes it works in your favor and sometimes it doesn’t,” Reese’s mom says. “She can come off a little abrasive but she’s really a sensitive gentle giant.”
While some loathe Reese’s audacious character, LSU has been the ideal place for the gifted forward to thrive, especially with a fearless and brazen chief like second-year coach Kim Mulkey, who has decades of experience and a winning pedigree at her disposal. As No. 3 LSU (23–0, 11–0 in SEC) prepares for its biggest assessment of the season, against the reigning national champion No. 1 South Carolina (23-0, 10-0) on Sunday at Colonial Life Arena, Reese’s 23 straight double-double performances this season along with the play of her teammates will be in a prime-time spotlight ahead of the NFL’s Super Bowl. But to think that just nine months ago, Reese would not have had the chance to embrace this moment had she not pivoted down to the Bayou State.
Three days after South Carolina earned its second national championship, Reese shook up the women’s college basketball landscape when she entered the transfer portal in what became a mass exodus of blue chip players from Maryland. Last season Reese’s Terrapins teammates included Chloe Bibby and Katie Benzan, who both graduated, as well as Mimi Collins (transferred to NC State) and Ashley Owusu (transferred to Virginia Tech). Diamond Miller and Shyanne Sellers stayed with the program under longtime coach Brenda Frese, who had recruited Reese since she was in the eighth grade.
After seeing limited production her freshman season due to a fracture in her right foot, Reese emerged as one of the nation’s top offensive rebounders her sophomore year, averaging 10.6 rebounds and 17.8 points per game. Despite her breakout season, she felt she needed a change of scenery from the guardrails at Maryland to a place that could embrace her bona fide self while also preparing for the WNBA. “I didn’t feel like I was the player I am now,” Reese says. “I wanted to regain my confidence, be free and have fun playing ball.” But the decision did not come easily—the Terrapins program had been her basketball haven for two years, and she had lived her entire life in the state of Maryland. “It was a tough step to make, but I had to walk in faith.”
When Reese told her mom she was starting a new chapter away from her and Maryland, the elder Angel had two requests: for her daughter to write out the pros and cons of her departure and to arrange program visits to accommodate her work schedule. “The decision was in Angel’s hands, but I wanted to be there to support her,” her mother says. They visited three SEC schools: South Carolina, coached by Dawn Staley; Tennessee, led by Kellie Harper—a Pat Summitt disciple—and LSU. Reese surely thought she would follow in the footsteps and great lineage that emerge from the Gamecocks and Volunteers programs. That’s until she made the trip to the Bayou to visit a LSU program coached by Mulkey—who had tried to recruit Reese in her sophomore year of high school. She visited the program’s facilities, met with the school president, William F. Tate IV, and took in the overwhelming support from fans who supported LSU women’s basketball. Reese, who would attend Julian’s games at Maryland, said even the Terrapins men’s team didn’t compare to the energy she feels at LSU. “It’s crazy the way they support women’s basketball,” she says.
By the time Reese announced that she was taking her talents to the Bayou on her 20th birthday, she was confident it was the “perfect fit.” Mulkey led LSU to a second-round appearance in her first season with the Tigers, but she needed a centerpiece, like Reese, who could carry that spunk and daring psyche on the hardwood. Mulkey also added some anchors on the sideline in assistant Bob Starkey—who spent more than two decades coaching the program’s men’s and women’s teams—and Gary Redus, a “recruiting machine.”
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With Reese at the forefront, these additions have revealed colossal dividends for LSU, which was ranked No. 16 in preseason but now sits among the top three in the country. “I think I needed her, and she needed me,” Reese says. The forward, who is a junior academically but listed as a sophomore due to COVID-19 eligibility, is one of nine newcomers—with a majority of them coming from the transfer portal. This year’s team has just three returners, including electric, lion-hearted guard Alexis Morris, who returned after overcoming a grade two MCL sprain late in the 2022 campaign. Morris, who played for Mulkey when she graced the hardwood of the college basketball powerhouse she built at Baylor, was dismissed from the program for violating team rules in ’18. But five years and two programs (Rutgers and Texas A&M) later, Morris is in her second and final act under Mulkey as LSU’s point guard—her prime position on the court—serving as the Tigers’ biggest threat from the perimeter and a great complement to Reese. “I appreciate our relationship because we can talk to each other, bump heads and still go win,” Morris says. “This is a grown woman’s game. She might say things and they don’t come off right or vice versa. At the end of the day, we want the same thing—to win.”
The year’s squad—which also includes former Missouri forward LaDazhia Williams, West Virginia transfer Jasmine Carson, Ohio State transfer Kateri Poole and rapping sensation and former 2022 McDonald’s All-American Flau’jae Johnson—has latched and clawed its way to an undefeated season thus far, surpassing the best start in program history (15–0), set in the ’02–03 season.
Before Mulkey’s first year, LSU had missed the tournament in four of its last six seasons—a tenure still often attached to the initial downfall of the program that stems back to the sex scandal around Pokey Chatman in 2007. But in Mulkey’s move to LSU in April ’21, she brought her obdurate flair. A year later, Reese is flourishing in Mulkey’s system and blazing her trail as a National Player of the Year candidate–currently averaging a whopping 23.5 points and 15.8 rebounds per game—and is the nation’s leader among win shares, with aspirations to lead the program to its first national title.
While LSU has yet to blemish its perfect season, Reese and her teammates have felt adversity. It’s why Mulkey never takes it easy on Reese—in a game or at practice. “She keeps it real with me,” Reese says. “She’ll tell me, ‘You don’t look like a NPOY,’ when I miss layups on a drill or, ‘You think you’re going to go up against Aliyah Boston? She’s going to block your shot.’ I never take it personal because I know she has my best interest.” With just a month before the start of this year’s tournament and less than three weeks before the SEC tournament takes center stage, Reese is built to face it all. But she can’t do it alone.
Reese is prowling the floor in a tightly contested matchup against the Razorbacks. Kim’s Krewe, the LSU student section, is raging with intensity while the Tigers trail Arkansas 74–73 late in the fourth quarter. After back-to-back layups from Reese, she’s built for the moment. But even in the heat of battle, she needs help. Reese turns to her first aid and signals the crowd to ramp up the volume before snagging a timely defensive rebound and pleading to Morris to unleash her greatness. Face to face, she looks at Morris—who was struggling to score—straight in her eyes with conviction, telling the fifth-year guard, “Big players make big plays at the right time.” It gave the nation a firm glimpse into their competitive relationship rooted in accountability. “Her leadership can bring life to a dead situation,” Morris says. The next Tigers possession, Morris set a high screen at the top of the key, allowing her to roll to the basket in converting a critical layup that ultimately helped the Tigers to a win.
However, little did Reese know, it was the beginning of a tough three-week span that included matchups against Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and Texas A&M. But the battles against Tennessee and Georgia, in particular, put Reese in an uncomfortable position. In a sold-out PMAC filled with record-setting 15,157 fans dressed in all white for a highly anticipated meeting with Tennessee that boasts two potential first-round 2023 WNBA draft picks in Jordan Horston and Rickea Jackson, the Volunteers contained Reese to a scant four points and four rebounds in the first half. But great players make great plays when the lights are bright. Reese adjusted her frame of mind from merely scoring to crashing the boards as well as finding teammates like Morris, who exploded for a career-high 31 points in a Tigers’ 76–68 victory. In the shadows of Morris’s momentous night, Reese kept her double-double streak alive. “I could barely hear that game and didn’t even know it was the fourth quarter,” she adds. “I’d never seen anything like it.”
Derick Hingle/Associated Press
And then there was Georgia. To the outside world, it was likely an overlooked game before the Tigers’ clash with the Gamecocks. But to Reese and her teammates, it was an overtime thriller that saw LSU trail for more than half of the game, 16 ties and 12 lead changes. Reese, again, was limited to single digits in the first half, and LSU led by one at halftime. But unlike in other games, LSU didn’t easily pull away, and the Bulldogs were efficient, using a rigid zone defense to limit Reese’s production and barking with a full head of steam in the second half—even taking a nine-point lead early in the fourth quarter, LSU’s biggest deficit of the season.
“I struggled because I was not used to the zone,” she says. But even among Reese’s struggles, Morris challenged her. “I told her to go rebound. … When she rebounds we’re a better team,” Morris says. “She told me to go get some buckets. It was a deal.” After a massive third-quarter outing, along with help from her teammates, Reese and Morris supplied big-time free throws and buckets to force overtime. But in the final five minutes it was Reese’s partner-in-crime, Morris, who hit the biggest shot of the game—a corner three off a Poole assist before immediately sticking her chest out and lifting her head up, signaling her Lex Luthor celebration. “When I do that, I’m locked in and I’m letting you know I’m here,” she says. It was a shot that LSU’s floor general, who finished with 15 points in the 82–77 win, practiced the previous night for hours by herself in the practice facility.
The Tigers momentum rolled over into College Station and carried LSU to its 23rd win while Reese notched her 23rd double double, along with double-digit production from Morris (22 points) and Johnson (11), setting up the biggest game of their season to this point. While a great majority of the 18,600 watching inside the CLC and the millions watching on TV will dub Sunday’s game against South Carolina as the battle between two TikToking, double-double queen” on a crash course for the nation’s top award in Boston and Reese, the contest goes beyond them. Reese says the game will come down to which team plays best cohesively on both sides of the ball, not individual matchups. “This is not Aliyah vs. Angel,” she adds.
Both teams rank in the top 10 for points per game, the top two in the nation in offensive rating and defensive rating, the top 12 in field goal percentage, the top three in offensive rebounds, the top four in defensive rebounds and the top nine in blocks per game, according to HerHoopStats. Last season the Gamecocks defeated the Tigers, 66–60, in Baton Rouge. Morris hasn’t forgotten, saying she will be “calling on Luthor” for this contest. As Reese enters the hostile environment for the high-profile matchup, she is at peace and back to enjoying the game she grew to love from a family of hoopers. But she’s motivated to continue the expedition across the Southeast, conquering the most arduous barriers within the league with hopes of climbing atop the women’s basketball mountain in Dallas to play for a national title April 2. “Everybody needs an Angel Reese,” Johnson says. “She’s the new queen in the SEC.” But in doing so, Reese gets to embrace her true self within the realms of a powerful group of ladies ready for battle right by her side.
“I’ve never been part of a team where I can critique someone and they can do the same for me and not take it personally,” Reese says. “They’re like family. … I’m a Barbie but when I step on the court, it’s about winning. … We have nothing to lose and we aren’t backing down from nobody.”
