LSU Basketball
Angel Reese may not have realized it, but in her first year in Louisiana she regularly had connections with the Corbett Award – the honor that the Sugar Bowl has bestowed on the top amateur athletes in Louisiana since 1967.
James J. Corbett Awards
Reese scored 23 points to go with 15 rebounds in a January victory over Auburn with LSU women’s basketball legend Seimone Augustus in attendance – Augustus is the only four-time winner of the Corbett Award as she was the runaway winner each year from 2003 to 2006.
In Reese’s final regular season game of the year, she scored 23 points with 26 rebounds in a 74-59 win over Mississippi State. It was her fifth game of the year with 20 points and 20 rebounds. And sitting courtside for the game was another dominant Tiger post player – Basketball Hall-of-Famer Shaquille O’Neal, who won back-to-back Corbett Awards in 1991 and 1992.
Reese continued her dominant play in her next game as she scored 18 points to go with 17 boards in a 76-68 SEC Tournament victory over Georgia. That performance gave her 28 double-doubles for the season, breaking the record set by Sylvia Fowles in 2007 – the same year that she earned the prestigious Corbett Award. Reese would finish the year with 34 double-doubles, to not only establish an imposing LSU record, but also a new NCAA record.
Reese’s Corbett Award connections closed the loop completely on July 28 – that’s the day it was officially announced that Reese herself is the latest winner of the award for the top amateur athlete in the state.
The 6-3 sophomore forward was dominant all season long for the Tigers, averaging 23.0 points and 15.4 rebounds per game (both tops in the SEC) while leading LSU to its seventh Final Four – and its first since a five-year run of Final Fours from 2004-08, not coincidentally, four of those featured Augustus and/or Fowles.
Most significantly, Reese was selected as the Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four as LSU captured its first NCAA women’s basketball championship. She scored 24 points to go with 12 rebounds and four blocks in a 79-72 semifinal victory over Virginia Tech and then recorded 15 points, 10 rebounds and four more blocks in the 102-85 national championship victory over Iowa.
"I feel like I've helped grow women's basketball this year. I'm super happy and excited," Reese said. "I don't care about what anybody else has to say about me. I don't care about being recognized as defensive player of the year or player of the year. The biggest goal was to be national champions, and that's what we did.”
A First Team All-American by the WBCA, the Associated Press, and the USBWA, the Baltimore native and transfer from the University of Maryland set an SEC record with 555 rebounds, just eight shy of the NCAA record. She also set SEC records with 240 made free throws and 339 free throw attempts. Her 830 points were the third-most in LSU history.
And at least one of her Corbett predecessors noticed. O’Neal caused quite a social media stir when he made the following pronouncement on The Big Podcast with Shaq: “She’s probably the greatest athlete to ever come out of LSU sports. You heard it here first. Male and female. She delivered. She delivered that package. See, a lot of us got the package, and we still got the package in our truck. She delivered that package.”
“I feel like I haven’t done anything yet, so I told him, ‘Don’t even say that yet," Reese said regarding Shaq’s comments. “I won a championship, but I just don’t feel like I’ve done enough.”
While the championships and accolades are the most eye-catching achievements, Reese is also credited with bringing a spark to the sport of women’s basketball at LSU and in Louisiana. In the Tigers’ regular season finale, 15,271 fans packed the Pete Maravich Assembly Center – a record for any basketball game, men’s and women’s – even more than any game from the days of the legendary Shaq and Seimone. LSU averaged 8,733 fans per home game with a total of 148,468, fifth-most in the nation.
That impact was recognized by yet another Corbett Award winner – her head coach Kim Mulkey, who earned the honor in 1984 in the days when the honor only went to one athlete, male or female. She topped male stars including Louisiana Tech’s Karl Malone, LSU’s Dalton Hilliard, and Tulane’s John “Hot Rod” Williams to become the second woman to earn the honor.
“(Reese) has helped us jumpstart and wake up this program, wake up this community,” Mulkey said after an NCAA Tournament win over Michigan when Reese scored 25 points to go with 24 rebounds. “Bringing young kids to ballgames and older people who are like, ‘thank you, Coach. We've just kind of been fading away, just waiting for something exciting to happen.’
“She's done that.”
While Reese has accomplished so much in just one year at LSU, she’s not done. The dynamic star who has been designated as the “Bayou Barbie” will be back in action for the Tigers in the 2023-24 season.
“I love the fan base here at LSU and I can't wait to be back here next year,” Reese said.
