BATON ROUGE, La. — From the moment Angel Reese left Baton Rouge, the Chicago Sky star was eager to return home.
Reese understood the rarity of Friday’s preseason game, which pitted the Sky against the Brazilian national team at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center, where she starred for two seasons with LSU.
Everything was familiar for Reese. The walk into the arena, her preferred seat in the locker room. And the trip was one long exercise in reminiscence, including a stop at Phil’s Oyster Bar for the best seafood she had eaten since leaving Louisiana.
It’s still hard to place a favorite memory from those two years in Baton Rouge. Reese always will be fond of the junior-year highlight when she blocked a shot by an Arkansas player while holding her own shoe — which came dislodged only seconds earlier — in her other hand.
But Reese’s main source of pride from her time at LSU is less tangible. It’s about building one of the strongest cultures in collegiate women’s basketball — and winning a national championship along the way.
“They already loved women’s basketball because of Kim Mulkey,” Reese said. “But then we won and it was just like — this is a women’s basketball school.”
Reese, entering her second season with the Sky, credits Mulkey more than anyone for preparing her for a successful WNBA career.
It wasn’t always a flowery relationship. Mulkey benched Reese for a handful of games at the start of her senior year. The pair didn’t always agree on how Reese should be utilized on the floor. But those two years with Mulkey gave Reese a formative foundation to withstand the rigors of becoming a professional.
“There’s not really anything that anybody can say to me as a coaching staff that can break me or tell me anything that I don’t know about myself or say to get me going, because I went through Kim Mulkey,” Reese said. “In the moment, I hated it, I’m not going to lie. I hated it and I dreaded it and I didn’t like it. And then when I left, I was really thankful for that moment. Looking back, it didn’t make sense in the moment. But now it all makes sense.”
No one understands that dynamic better than Sky rookie Hailey Van Lith, who also made her return to LSU for Friday’s game for her WNBA preseason debut.
Reese and Van Lith spent only one year together at LSU. It was hard. Exhausting. Disappointing. But it also taught both players they were cut from the same cloth, the type of tough material that can withstand the pressure and expectations of playing in Baton Rouge and playing under Mulkey.
When the Sky front office was considering Van Lith in the draft, Reese didn’t hesitate to vouch for her former — and future — teammate.
“Hailey works her ass off,” Reese told general manager Jeff Pagliocca. “You want a dog? Go get a dog.”
He did. The Sky selected Van Lith with the 11th pick.
Reese understands the weight of legacy in LSU women’s basketball because of two women who came before her: Seimone Augustus and Sylvia Fowles.
In Baton Rouge, it’s impossible to escape the pair’s shadows. Their jerseys are hanging from the rafters of the stadium. A statue of Augustus — now an assistant coach with the program — stands watch over the arena’s northern entrance. Both players redefined standards for their position. Augustus retired a top-10 scorer in WNBA history. Fowles became one of the greatest rebounders in the league’s history.
Reese grew up going to Minnesota Lynx games with her mother, who is close friends with former WNBA player Taj McWilliams. One of her favorite full-circle moments as a player is a picture of herself at 9 with Augustus. And as the “double-double queen” of the WNBA, Fowles — who will be inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in September — became both an idol and a milestone whose records Reese has been chasing since she entered the league.
“I can’t forget Sylvia and Seimone,” Reese said. “They walked so we could run. I’ve got to give them their flowers. We wouldn’t be there without them. … They’re winners and they left their legacy in the WNBA. I’m glad to have them in my corner.”
And if there are any dreams of joining Augustus and Fowles in the rafters? Well, Reese isn’t rushing anything yet.
“It’ll come,” Reese said. “Time comes. I’m in Year 2 so I don’t expect it to be right away. It took awhile to get Seimone’s statue up there. I know my time will come.”
For some players, leaving college is a nostalgic decision. Leaving home is hard. And when a season ends with an unexpected loss — as it did in the Elite Eight of the 2024 NCAA Tournament, ending the Tigers’ repeat bid — it can be easy to consider running it back for one more year.
But for Reese? Not a chance.
Sure, fans might opine the “what if” scenarios had Reese remained for one more year with Aneesah Morrow, Flaujae Johnson and the rest of the LSU roster. But even as she reveled in the homecoming, Reese felt content with the way her time ended at LSU — and with the legacy that will remain long after she left Baton Rouge for Chicago.
“I did exactly what I wanted to do here,” Reese said. “You got to know when you want to move on and it was time for me to move on. And I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”
