BATON ROUGE, La. — When the WNBA put together a preseason game between the Sky and the Brazilian national team at LSU, it was built around Angel Reese. There were other storylines, but Reese was the undisputed headliner.
And she was thrilled to embrace it.
The crowd at the Maravich Center roared during warmups when Reese was shown on the jumbotron singing along to every word of Garth Brooks’ “Callin’ Baton Rouge,” a tradition at LSU games, and pantomiming a lasso while she danced to it on the baseline. Then it erupted when she got the full home-court treatment in player introductions.
“I was able to build my legacy here,” Reese said. “I was somebody before I came here, but I was able to build a brand off the court. That’s important. Winning a national championship also helps. Just being able to build that ‘Bayou Barbie.’ Everybody knows me as that from down here.”
The game, an 89-62 blowout victory by the Sky to open the preseason in front of 6,373 fans, was secondary, as was rookie Hailey Van Lith’s first time back at LSU and center Kamilla Cardoso’s reunion with her national team. But in every way, it was Reese’s night.
The video shown just before tipoff began with her famous “shoe block” highlight from 2023, when her left shoe came off during a play and she blocked an Arkansas player’s layup with one hand while holding her footwear in the other. Then it rolled through the rest of her memorable moments, such as cutting down the net after leading LSU to the only championship in program history.
LSU coach Kim Mulkey chatted with Reese’s mother before the game and greeted Reese and Van Lith with flowers before tipoff.
Reese and Mulkey held on for a long hug as they talked on the court. Their appreciation of each other has grown since Reese left, and their friction has subsided.
“She’s going to tell you what it is and keep it real with you — I appreciate that,” Reese said. “In the moment, I hated it. And then when I left, I was really thankful for that. It didn’t make sense in the moment, but now it all makes sense.”
Van Lith’s experience with Mulkey was valuable in its own way, but she seemed far less enthusiastic leading up to the trip. She transferred in from Louisville, played one season for LSU, then quickly left for TCU.
She made reference to her LSU season being a time “when you weren’t expecting what you walked into” or “don’t feel like you necessarily fit,” but it made her more adaptable.
Her pregame hug with Mulkey was much shorter.
Reese did her usual work, scoring 15 points and grabbing 10 rebounds in just 17 minutes, before checking out late in the third quarter. She played with tape on her shooting hand. She suffered a fracture in her wrist last season and sprained it in March in the Unrivaled three-on-three league. Reese said after the game she has had no issues playing with her hand wrapped.
There’s a long season ahead, and in that regard this was merely a chance for the Sky to get loose and get started. For Reese, though, there was something special about looking up at that national championship banner again. She thought about who she was when she played here and summed it up with one word: “Winner.”
At the other end of the arena are the retired numbers, including Pete Maravich and Shaquille O’Neal from the men’s program and Seimone Augustus and Sylvia Fowles from the women’s. Someday, Reese might get her No. 10 up there.
“I don’t expect it to be right away,” she said. “It took a while to get Seimone’s statue out there. My time will come.”
Based on the reception Friday, it already has.