LSU’s Angel Reese reacts in entrance of Iowa’s Caitlin Clark throughout the second half of the NCAA Girls’s Ultimate 4 championship basketball recreation April 2, 2023, in Dallas.
Tony Gutierrez/AP
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Tony Gutierrez/AP
LSU’s Angel Reese reacts in entrance of Iowa’s Caitlin Clark throughout the second half of the NCAA Girls’s Ultimate 4 championship basketball recreation April 2, 2023, in Dallas.
Tony Gutierrez/AP
A extremely anticipated recreation in ladies’s NCAA basketball is simply across the nook and it isn’t the championship.
Louisiana State College and the College of Iowa are set to compete at 7 p.m. ET on Monday within the Elite Eight, bringing collectively two of school basketball’s largest stars: LSU’s Angel Reese and Iowa’s Caitlin Clark will face off for a ultimate time on the collegiate degree.
Many see the sport as a rematch of final yr’s nationwide championship when LSU beat Iowa 102-85. Whereas Monday’s recreation will not finish with a championship ring, the stakes are nonetheless excessive, as it should decide who will advance to the Ultimate 4.
In a press convention Saturday, Clark stated she is trying ahead to enjoying LSU.
“Any time you have got an opportunity to go up towards someone you misplaced to, it brings a bit extra vitality,” she stated. “I feel total, it will be a extremely nice recreation for girls’s basketball.”
Clark and Reese’s time on the courtroom collectively final yr additionally drew some controversy.
Throughout the recreation, whereas celebrating her crew’s fourth-quarter lead, Reese waved one hand in entrance of her face — a gesture broadly often called wrestler John Cena’s “You Cannot See Me” transfer — and tapped her ring finger whereas observing Clark.
Reese shortly obtained backlash, with commentators and observers calling it unsportsmanlike. At one level, the phrase “classless” in reference to Reese trended on Twitter.
Others chimed in to notice that Clark too had used the identical gestures throughout March Insanity, however didn’t obtain such criticisms. Many referred to as that an instance of a racist double normal.
However for the reason that hand gesture drama, each gamers declare there is no beef between them.
“Me and Caitlin Clark do not hate one another. I would like all people to grasp that. It is only a super-competitive recreation,” Reese told reporters Sunday.
“I’ve watched a variety of LSU video games and what they’re doing for girls’s basketball and the way in which their followers assist, it is large,” Clark advised ESPN’s Holly Rowe on Saturday. “They’ve had a fantastic season so I do know it is gonna be a fantastic recreation and each groups are gonna be able to go.”
This season, Clark turned the all-time main scorer in NCAA Division 1 basketball, males’s or ladies’s. In late February, she introduced that this season could be her final with the Hawkeyes and that she plans to enter the WNBA draft.