Angel Reese and Flau’jae Johnson teamed up to help LSU win a National Championship in 2023; now, the pair are hardly in touch. Even though the Tigers remain one of the most prominent women’s college basketball programs, the team certainly feels her absence.
“A lot of people still ask us, ‘Where’s Angel?'” star senior Aneesah Morrow admitted to the Chicago Sun-Times in a recent interview. “What Angel’s done for the game cannot be replaced.”
Reese and Johnson were close friends at LSU both on and off the court, and Johnson has assumed the mantle as the team’s top player in her absence – her 20.5 points per game leads the team (Morrow is not far behind at 18.4).
Despite passing the reigns of the team to Johnson, Reese admitted in September during an episode of her ‘Unapologetically Angel’ podcast that they’ve drifted apart.
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“I still support Flau’jae, [but] We aren’t as close as we used to be,” Reece admitted. “And there’s no hard feelings or anything, but we aren’t as close as we used to be. That’s why people always expect us to still be posting each other and stuff like that. But, like, we aren’t as close.”
“It happens,” she continued. “You don’t have the best relationships with everybody and don’t always continue relationships with people. So I wish her the best always, and I’m always gonna support her… but yeah, there’s no love lost.”
In an exclusive interview with the New York Post in September, Johnson echoed the sentiment while emphasizing her love for her former teammate.
Aneesah Morrow has emerged as a key scorer for LSU in Angel Reese’s absense (
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Getty Images)
“Me and Angel, we aren’t as close as we used to be,” Johnson revealed “But I still support her 1000 percent. I was proud of her, just being in the W[NBA] and breaking records.”
Reese emerged as a force in the WNBA in her rookie season, leading the league in rebounds, making the All-Star game, and finishing second in the 2024 WNBA Rookie of the Year Vote behind Caitlin Clark. At LSU, Reese was the 2023 NCAA Tournament Most Outstanding Player as well as a two-time First-team All-American. Johnson, her protege, has captured some accolades too.
The junior guard was named the 2023 SEC Freshman of the Year and cracked the 2024 All-SEC Second-team. Averaging 20.5 points and 6.2 rebounds a night, Johnson looks poised to enter All-American conversations. At 15-0, the Tigers are ranked sixth in the nation. The program will face its first true test of the season when it visits No. 2 South Carolina in late January.
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