BATON ROUGE, La. — Angel Reese was still enjoying the buzz around LSU’s national championship last spring when the rumors started.
Hailey Van Lith, an All-ACC first-team honoree who averaged nearly 20 points and led Louisville to the Elite Eight, and Aneesah Morrow, a former national freshman of the year from DePaul, had entered the transfer portal and were said to be considering joining Reese at LSU.
Reese had one thought: “I want ’em all.”
The reigning women’s Final Four Most Outstanding Player and an All-American, Reese is one of the faces of the game and a big success in the Name, Image and Likeness space. But her mindset in trying to win another NCAA title goes beyond her contributions.
She knows LSU will be the top target this season as the defending champion. The better the Tigers are, the better their chances at repeating. And Reese couldn’t have been happier at the thought of adding Van Lith and Morrow, the top two players in ESPN’s transfer rankings.
“I told them, ‘I want y’all to come here. I want to battle you every day in practice,'” Reese said during LSU’s media day in early October. “I don’t want to play with people I can just walk over in practice. I want people that can compete.
“We do have a lot of talent. I’m gonna have to sacrifice some things. Everybody will have to sacrifice points, minutes. You have to understand that about being on a team that’s selfless.”
LSU beat Virginia Tech and Iowa at the Final Four in Dallas to claim the program’s first NCAA championship. It came in coach Kim Mulkey’s second season at LSU, and transfers played a big role. Four were in the starting lineup at the Final Four, led by Reese, who came to LSU last season after two years at Maryland.
The one-time transfer exemption and NIL have dramatically altered how teams can be constructed, with Mulkey and LSU at the forefront of capitalizing on those changes. The Tigers proved it again with Van Lith and Morrow coming to Baton Rouge, along with the No. 1-ranked recruiting class, led by top-10 signees Mikaylah Williams and Aalyah Del Rosario. And in addition to Reese, LSU also returns players like standout sophomore Flau’jae Johnson.
The Tigers know the questions many outside of purple-and-gold territory are asking: Can they all mesh? Are there enough shots and rebounds to go around for so many potential stars? Is there such a thing as too much of a good thing?
Van Lith, having heard multiple versions of a “How will so many big personalities get along?” question during LSU’s media day in early October, cut to the chase.
“I don’t know what that means. Big personalities?” she said. “I feel like a lot of people are giving opinions, whether they’re good or bad, about our team, and they’re expecting us to take them into account.
“It’s up to us whether we do that. There are opinions saying we’re going to be the best team ever for women’s basketball, and opinions saying, you know, ‘big personalities.’ There are going to be extremes for us and against us, and it’s up to us to let it affect us or not.”
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Van Lith can’t remember exactly which game it was last season, but she saw on TV how hard Reese battled during an LSU game and sent her a direct message on social media afterward. At that point, Van Lith had no idea they would become teammates. She just wanted to say she was a fan of how Reese plays.
“That’s the type of personality on the court that I can relate to,” Van Lith said. “I love that competitive energy.”
Louisville lost to Iowa in the Elite Eight, ending Van Lith’s third season with the Cardinals. But it wasn’t until at least two weeks after the NCAA final, she said, that she decided to enter the transfer portal.
“Emotionally, I was very tied to my teammates at Louisville,” Van Lith said. “But individually, the best thing for my personal well-being, my happiness, my basketball development was to transfer.”
When Mulkey was still coach at Baylor, she recruited Van Lith, who didn’t think the offensive system there was the best fit for her. A few years later, with Mulkey at LSU, Van Lith felt differently. The energy she had admired from Reese seemed to infuse the entire Tigers team.
Now, it seemed just right for Van Lith. She also wanted to learn the point guard role from Mulkey, who played it in college and has mentored many players at the position.
Meanwhile, the 6-foot-1 Morrow — a second-team All-American and the national freshman of the year in 2021-22 — sat down and talked to her parents when the Blue Demons’ 16-17 season ended in March. She said she realized then that while she had accomplished individual goals at DePaul, it wasn’t enough.
“I wanted something bigger than just the individual,” Morrow said. “I had a lot of schools that wanted me to come there. But I wanted to focus on the qualities I wanted in a team and a university. Talking to Coach Mulkey and telling her everything I wanted to accomplish, seeing that aligned, that’s why I chose LSU.”
Morrow and Reese were the only players in Division I last season to be in the top 10 in both scoring and rebounding. Is Morrow concerned about how it would affect them to be on the same team?
“Angel is a competitor, and I wanted to be with her every day,” Morrow said. “If we’re competing, we’re doing nothing but making each other better.”
“Aneesah and Hailey have been the best players on their teams. They’ve had the guts to step away from that.”Angel Reese
Reese averaged 23.0 points and 15.4 rebounds last season; Morrow 25.7 and 12.2. Van Lith averaged 19.7 points. Combined, they took just more than 56 shots a game last season for their respective teams. LSU as a team took about 65 per game.
So it remains to be seen how the offense this season will be spread out among the Tigers. But as far as they’re concerned, it’s better to have so many answers than not enough.
“People ask those kids in particular, ‘Why did you come here?'” said Mulkey about Van Lith and Morrow. “Those kids came here for a ring. They know they’re gonna have to sacrifice some things — whether it’s playing time or number of shots — but they want to be a part of this.
“We also heard all last year we had a lot of personalities. And I said, ‘We do.’ But you don’t squelch their personalities unless something becomes a negative, or they’re not a good teammate. I believe those personalities want a coach that’s strong.”
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Reese knew her life was going to change when she transferred to LSU. She didn’t quite realize how much.
Last season, she kept putting up huge numbers and the Tigers kept winning all the way until Feb. 12. But criticism that LSU’s weak nonconference schedule didn’t prepare the Tigers for tougher competition got louder after they lost their first game of the season that day, by 24 points at No. 1 and unbeaten South Carolina.
The Gamecocks won the SEC regular-season and tournament titles (Tennessee eliminated LSU in the SEC semifinals), then headed to the Final Four as the favorite to repeat as NCAA champions. Iowa upset them in the national semis, so we will never know if a title-game rematch of the SEC foes would have been different than February’s outcome.
“I think we played with a chip on our shoulder last year,” Reese said, “because a lot of people didn’t know how good we were.”
Mulkey said that with the number of new faces the Tigers must incorporate, there are no guarantees about this season. Reese would like to keep a little of the underdog vibe going, but no one is thinking of LSU that way.
Reese knows she has her fans and detractors. Toward the end of the NCAA title game, she flashed John Cena’s “You can’t see me” gesture and pointed to her ring finger as she followed Iowa’s Caitlin Clark — who had also flashed “You can’t see me” after a win over Louisville in Elite Eight. The moment drew some criticism, but Reese and Clark both have brushed off suggestions there’s any hard feelings between them.
Reese said she just wants people to appreciate the passion she plays with, and that her biggest goal ultimately is to continue to grow women’s basketball. She recently signed an endorsement deal with Reebok and has a multi-faceted NIL brand.
She said she isn’t concerned about how her stats, or how they might be impacted by the talented players around her at LSU. And nothing, she pointed out, brings more attention than championships.
“Aneesah and Hailey have been the best players on their teams,” Reese said. “They’ve had the guts to step away from that. I come in every day and want to live up to Coach Mulkey’s expectations. I love how she coaches us hard. I don’t want her to ever let up.
“I have a vision board I made coming into this year. I’ve accomplished everything on the board. Seeing the things I’ve accomplished not just basketball-wise, school-wise and NIL-wise, I don’t think I could have done it anywhere else but LSU.”
Morrow and Van Lith hope they’ll be able to say the same thing when this season ends.
