The Chicago Sky’s preseason opener in Baton Rouge, La., will offer a rare return to the past for three of their youngest stars.
Forward Angel Reese and No. 11 pick Hailey Van Lith will be returning to their alma mater. And second-year center Kamilla Cardoso will face off against her former teammates on the Brazilian national team.
The game is part of a new WNBA series to bring preseason games to college markets of its top stars. This year’s slate will include games hosted at Iowa, Oregon and Notre Dame to feature top alums such as Caitlin Clark, Sabrina Ionescu, Jewell Loyd, Arike Ogunbowale and Jackie Young.
For players, the games are a welcome reunion and a source of remembrance of important aspects of their basketball careers.
“I think it’s amazing for all of us,” Cardoso said. “It’s amazing for Angel, amazing for Hailey. I know we’re all just excited. They’re excited to go back home, I’m excited to play my national team.”
Neither Van Lith nor Reese has returned to Baton Rouge, La., since last spring’s graduation. It will be the first time both players have stepped on the court at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center since the 2023-24 season.
Both transferred to LSU during their collegiate careers — Reese as a junior, Van Lith as a senior — but their relationships with the Tigers are different. Reese won a national championship at LSU in 2023, a significant victory that established her as one of the most recognizable faces in college sports. It’s a relationship Reese never left, even after graduation.
“I created my brand there,” Reese said. “I became the Bayou Barbie there. I won a national championship there. That’s home for me.”
Van Lith spent only one season of her five-year NCAA career at LSU. She struggled during that season as the Tigers were bounced in the Elite Eight following their national championship victory. Despite the results, the guard values how those challenges molded her as a prospective professional player.
Both players felt their experiences under LSU coach Kim Mulkey shaped them into players who were prepared to compete in the WNBA.
“Training camp is easy because of how practices were at LSU,” Reese said. “If you’ve ever been to a practice at LSU, it’s four hours, going, going, going — and there’s no taking breaks.”
For Cardoso, the preseason setting is less familiar than the opponent.
The Brazilian national team is like a second family to Cardoso, who has played with most of the roster since she was a young girl in Montes Claros. International duty is a serious honor for Cardoso, who is still grieving Brazil’s near-miss in the Olympic qualifiers for the Paris Games last summer.
Brazil is still working to establish itself in the current era of international women’s basketball. The program won the 1994 FIBA women’s World Cup and medaled in both the 1996 (silver) and 2000 (bronze) Olympics but has not reached the podium in either major tournament the last 25 years.
Cardoso is one of only two current Brazilian players under a full-time contract in the WNBA, alongside the Indiana Fever’s Damiris Dantas. She has been a mainstay on the team since 2021, when she helped Brazil win bronze at the FIBA AmeriCup tournament.
Despite living in the U.S. for the last eight years, Cardoso keeps up with her national teammates on a daily basis through a WhatsApp group chat. This week, some of those conversations have turned to talking trash. After all, Cardoso isn’t going to hold back on blocking the shots of her Brazilian teammates, family be damned.
In fact, everyone in Cardoso’s vicinity was fair game for a little smack talk this week — including Reese and Van Lith.
Although they left their college rivalries behind when they became Sky teammates, Cardoso couldn’t help but make a few jokes about playing LSU while at South Carolina in the buildup to Friday’s game.
“I mean, we won every time we played them, right?” Cardoso said with a grin.
Those rivalries will matter less Friday, as Cardoso teams up with Reese and Van Lith to begin the next chapter for a young Sky club eager to outperform expectations in 2025.
