NEED TO KNOW

• Angel Reese returned to LSU on Thursday night

• The WNBA star was honored at her alma mater on a night when the basketball team made Division I history

• The Lady Tigers beat Texas Southern, 131-22, setting a new record for largest margin of victory

It’s the return of Bayou Barbie!

Angel Reese visited her alma mater on Thursday night, where she was honored at halftime, and then watched the LSU Tigers make Division I history when they posted the largest margin of victory in a 131-22 mauling of Texas Southern.

Reese was honored at halftime with a bouquet of roses, a sash that said “Bayou Barbie” and a gold crown as the capacity crowd proudly flashed back to celebrate its 2023 NCAA championship win.

After the game, Reese joined her former coach Kim Mulkey and LSU players Jada Williams and Anna Minaeva — a 17-year-old, 6-foot, 5-inch freshman from Russia who made her college debut — for media availability.

“This is home for me,” Reese, 24, said. “The crowd loves me here and I just appreciate that, and being able to see women’s basketball continue and to grow — Coach Mulkey has done a great job continuing this. There hasn’t been a drop off. The fans continue to show up. They’re the same fans that I’ve seen three, four years ago.” 

In the years since college, Reese has extended her success to the WNBA where she was recently named the league’s 2026 Defensive Player of the Year in her first season with the Atlanta Dream.

“Any player who plays under Coach Mulkey, I think that makes it easier going into the [WNBA] because you’re coached so hard in college,” Reese told reporters. “When you go from four-hour practices to an hour, I’m like, ‘Well, any more? Like, what else do we have?’ ”

Less than one week after her team lost to the Golden State Valkyries in Game 7 of the WNBA Finals, Reese relished the trip to Louisiana for another reason.

The WNBA star plans to cheer on her brother, Julian Reese, who is on a two-way contract with the New Orleans Pelicans, when the team plays the Minnesota Timberwolves on Friday night in an NBA Cup game. 

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On Thursday, Mulkey shared her pride about her former player.

“For them to see her walk in that locker room and they all had her shirt on, they [see] that they can be Angel one day,” Mulkey, 64, said.

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