- Angel Reese helped lead the No. 3 LSU Tigers to their first-ever national championship in basketball.
- The superstar forward trolled Iowa Hawkeyes star Caitlin Clark in the waning moments of the title game.
Angel Reese was an unstoppable force for the LSU Tigers throughout their run to the 2023 national championship.
But instead of feeling love and adoration from college basketball fans as she recorded a record 34 double-doubles on the season, Reese said she "was critiqued about who I was" all season long.
That sentiment came to a head in the last minute of Friday's title game, where the Baltimore native recorded an impressive 15 points, 10 rebounds, and five assists. With the clock winding down and her Tigers up a whopping 17 points against the second-seeded Iowa Hawkeyes, Reese took the opportunity to do some trolling.
The 6-foot-3 forward pulled out John Cena's famed "You can't see me" celebration — which Clark herself deployed during an explosive Sweet 16 performance — to taunt the National Player of the Year. She also pointed to the finger where she plans to wear her championship ring.
—ESPN (@espn) April 2, 2023
Critics immediately headed to social media to slam Reese for her antics. "No class" was trending on Twitter in the immediate aftermath of the game, almost surely in reference to the Tigers star later named the Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four.
By contrast, Clark was widely celebrated as "competitive" and "cold" — in a good way — after she made the same gesture to Louisville's Hailey Van Lith in the Elite Eight. Reese understandably took issue with the double standard and used her platform in the postgame press conference to address her concerns.
"I don't fit the narrative. I don't fit in a box that y'all want me to be in," Reese said. "I'm too hood. I'm too ghetto. Y'all told me that all year."
—The Sporting News (@sportingnews) April 2, 2023
"But when other people do it, y'all say nothing," she added. "So this was for the girls that look like me, that's going to speak up on what they believe in. It's unapologetically you. That's what I did it for tonight. It was bigger than me tonight. It was bigger than me."
Seemingly undeterred by the skeptics, Reese leaned in on social media after the game. She shared a still image of herself taunting Clark almost immediately after the buzzer sounded — perhaps as a way to show the naysayers just how little their unsolicited input impacted her.
—Angel Reese (@Reese10Angel) April 3, 2023
Reese noted that she's "happy" and unbothered by watching folks on Twitter "go on a rage every time" she does something on the court.
"I don't care about anybody else and what they have to say about me. That's the difference between me and a lot of people — I don't," she said. "The biggest goal for me is the national championship... That's what I can just brag on."
"Twitter can say what Twitter can say," she added. "I love reading those comments. I have all the screenshots of what everybody has said about me all season."
"What are you going to say now?"