The crowds of followers ready for autographs and selfies after Louisiana State girls’s basketball video games have gotten so giant that the workforce has been touring with a police officer.
On a squad stuffed with personalities, the primary attraction is Angel Reese, who is understood round Baton Rouge because the Bayou Barbie. A 6-foot-3 ahead from Baltimore, she is writing her title in L.S.U.’s report books and is among the many main candidates for nationwide participant of the 12 months.
Within the workforce’s regular-season finale, the most important residence crowd of all of them, 15,271 followers — a report for both males’s or girls’s basketball on the Pete Maravich Meeting Middle — noticed Reese notch her twenty seventh double-double of the season. She did it by the second quarter. After the Tigers closed out their victory over Mississippi State, Shaquille O’Neal, one of the recognizable former L.S.U. gamers, met her on the court.
It was simply the most recent banner second in a season stuffed with them for Reese, who transferred from Maryland earlier than the season and has develop into the main participant for certainly one of Division I’s prime groups. As she is swatting photographs, snatching rebounds and craftily banking in scoop layups, she is taking part in the Baltimore approach.
“I really feel like that’s what separates me from lots of gamers, that I’ve that canine mentality and I all the time need to go on the market and win and I’m very obsessed with that,” Reese stated in a cellphone interview final week. “So whoever’s in entrance of me, I’m going to go get it, and I’m going to speak trash to you the entire whole recreation, and that’s that.”
Reese has performed an instrumental position because the Tigers (27-1, 15-1 Southeastern Convention) have adopted a 26-win marketing campaign in Coach Kim Mulkey’s first season by matching the very best common season in program historical past: that of the 2004-5 Ultimate 4 workforce that featured Sylvia Fowles and Seimone Augustus.
The backcourt has additionally helped propel Louisiana State to its No. 4 rating within the Related Press ballot. Alexis Morris is averaging 14.5 factors and practically two steals per recreation in her second stint taking part in for Mulkey, after beginning her profession at Baylor. After which there’s Flau’jae Johnson, the SEC freshman of the 12 months and, as an “America’s Received Expertise” decide stated, a “beast to be reckoned with” as a rapper.
However Reese is the engine powering the Tigers. She has recorded 5 video games with at the very least 20 factors and 20 rebounds, and he or she ranks within the prime 5 in Division I in factors and rebounds per recreation.
Her 23 consecutive double-doubles to begin the season — breaking Fowles’s program report streak of 19 — included scoring 10 fourth-quarter factors in opposition to Georgia to stave off an upset try final month. If Reese tallies one other double-double throughout the SEC match this weekend in Greenville, S.C., or within the N.C.A.A. match that begins later this month, she is going to break Fowles’s single-season workforce report.
The one workforce to carry Reese under a double-double, and the one workforce to beat L.S.U. to this point this season, was No. 1 South Carolina, the reigning nationwide champion. The groups can meet once more on Sunday, within the SEC title recreation, in the event that they each win their first two match video games.
Followers had been salivating over final month’s matchup between Reese and South Carolina ahead Aliyah Boston, who was the participant of the 12 months in 2022. After the sport, an 88-64 Gamecocks win, Reese and Boston chatted within the South Carolina area, complimenting one another’s expertise and the best way they every promote the game.
“I feel her rebounding is out the roof,” Boston stated in a cellphone interview final week. “I feel she does an important job of pursuing the basketball and simply crashing and simply being, you already know, that dominant participant on L.S.U.’s roster.”
Reese’s friendships with different gamers haven’t dulled her aggressive edge. That was on show on Feb. 19, in a recreation in opposition to Florida. Nina Rickards made a contested layup in opposition to Reese and taunted her because the ball went in. Lower than two minutes later, Reese spiked Rickards’s shot on the rim as if it had been a volleyball and shouted. The gamers, who Reese stated have been buddies since highschool, each acquired technical fouls.
Reese’s hearth received probably the most consideration throughout a recreation in opposition to Arkansas in January. She had misplaced a shoe throughout a play; as she tried to slide it again on her foot, Samara Spencer of the Razorbacks started driving down the lane. Together with her shoe in her left hand, Reese blocked the shot together with her proper and yelled down at Spencer on the ground. That resulted in a technical, too.
After the sport, a 3-point win for L.S.U., Reese said on Twitter, “Let’s normalize girls displaying ardour for the sport as an alternative of it being ‘embarrassing.’”
When Reese does obtain technicals, Mulkey often asks the referees what Reese stated or did. Typically, she stated, it was only a look.
“I inform her, ‘I’ll determine in the event you’ve crossed the road, and you probably have you then’ll come sit by me,’” Mulkey stated in an interview final week. “And but on the identical time I additionally educate her, you already know, even in the event you didn’t cross the road, you higher hope that we don’t lose by two free throws that they’re going to get.
“You simply educate her,” Mulkey stated. “You by no means need to take ardour away from gamers.”
Reese’s coach has typically seen that depth. Jimmy Worth, a longtime buddy of the household, stated that drive stood out particularly after a recreation throughout Reese’s freshman 12 months at St. Frances Academy in Baltimore, “once I knew she arrived.” Reese had 24 factors and 20 rebounds in a nationwide semifinal, however her workforce misplaced in additional time.
“After the sport, she was simply crying and crying, and he or she simply didn’t need to be bothered with anyone,” Worth stated. “And I see that’s a coronary heart of a champion. Solely champions try this.”
After 4 standout years at St. Frances, Reese joined Maryland because the No. 2 recruit nationally in her class, behind solely Connecticut guard Paige Bueckers. Her brother Julian joined the lads’s workforce at Maryland the following season.
A Jones fracture in her proper foot restricted Reese to simply 15 video games as a freshman, however she broke out as a sophomore, averaging a double-double with practically 18 factors per recreation. Within the Terrapins’ N.C.A.A. match loss to Stanford, their second consecutive defeat within the spherical of 16, Reese had 25 factors, 9 rebounds, 3 steals and three blocks. It might be her final recreation at Maryland.
After the season, she determined she “wanted one thing new.” A 3rd-team all-American, a neighborhood prospect who had joined Maryland as the highest recruit in program historical past, all of a sudden entered the switch portal as one of the proficient gamers obtainable.
“I wanted a recent begin, a coach to push me to get me to the following stage,” she stated. “I need to be a prime draft decide and I need to win on the highest stage, so having the ability to come to L.S.U. and construct with Coach Mulkey and every part she has accomplished in a single 12 months was simply one thing that was vital to me.”
A part of what has made Reese so profitable this season is solely being on the court docket extra. She is in higher form, she stated, plus she has averted fouling out after doing so 4 instances as a sophomore. She has already performed extra minutes this season in 4 fewer video games.
Reese’s play and persona have endeared her to the L.S.U. followers, who gave her the Bayou Barbie nickname for her glamorous look. It’s a becoming moniker for a participant who says she has to have her nails accomplished for each recreation. Reese swipes on lip gloss earlier than taking the court docket and applies her eyelash extensions herself. With an eye fixed to endorsement earnings, she goes by the method of trademarking the title. (She additionally has a YouTube channel and title, picture and likeness offers with Coach and a neighborhood legislation agency.)
Reese attracts inspiration from these followers and from the L.S.U. legends that got here earlier than. She has talked with Augustus and proven her an old photograph: an elementary-school-aged Reese standing subsequent to Augustus after a W.N.B.A. recreation. Reese retains that picture in thoughts when she encounters these postgame throngs.
“That might be me for any person else in the future,” she stated.