How Hailey Van Lith found direction and peace at LSU (2024)

Iowa prevailed Monday in a tightly contested battle between two of the most-hyped stars and teams in women's college basketball, as the Hawkeyes took down the defending champion LSU Tigers 94-87 to return to the Final Four.

Led by star guard Caitlin Clark with a game-high 41 points, the No. 1 Hawkeyes pulled ahead in the second half — as Clark put up 12 points in the third quarter to help Iowa carry an 11-point lead into the fourth. Clark finished with 12 assists and seven rebounds and shot 13-of-29 from the field, including 9-of-20 from 3.

The No. 3 Tigers opened the game with strong rebounding (with 12 boards in the first compared to Iowa's five), while the Hawkeyes relied on their 3-point shooting, which proved too much for LSU's defense.

Tigers star Angel Reese finished with 17 points and a game-high 20 rebounds. Reese briefly exited in the first half after falling underneath the basket. She hopped directly to the bench without putting any weight on her right leg but returned shortly after exiting. She later fouled out with 1:45 remaining and LSU trailing by 10 points.

The contest marked a rematch of last year's title game, which LSU won 102-85 over Iowa to claim its first national championship. Iowa is seeking its first title and will face the winner of No. 1 USC and No. 3 UConn in the Final Four on Friday.

ALBANY, N.Y. – This has not been an easy year for Hailey Van Lith. She knows everyone knows that. Her scoring is down from last year at Louisville. Her minutes are down, too.

But she is not down.

“What I’m most proud of is, I feel like it’s been a fight for me all year, but I’ve been willing to get back in the battle every time,” Van Lith said during an introspective moment in LSU’s locker room. “In my head, I’ll have a couple of bad games and be like, I just can’t figure this out. But I won’t give up.’

“I’m getting back in the ring. I’m getting back in there to fight.”

It’s taken Van Lith a while to get to this point — and even longer to be ready to talk about it. But here she is on the cusp of the Final Four, a vital stage for a national championship contender. It sounds like it all worked out, even though it’s been far from a straight line from Point A to Point B.

Van Lith’s life changed drastically last April when she decided to enter the transfer portal and eventually choose LSU. People she thought cared about her — as a person, not just a basketball player — were very vocal and very negative about her decision.

“It really tore me down,” Van Lith said. “I was really starting to second-guess the decision. But it was a decision I had prayed on. It was a very thought-out decision. It was something I needed to do. But I was second-guessing that because of what other people were saying. I was like, ‘Hailey, why isn’t what you feel ever enough for yourself? This is too much.’ I’m 22 now. I’ve got to figure this out.”

But she couldn’t do it privately, like most people can.

“As athletes, we’re out there in the public,” she said. “People judge what we do. It’s part of the profession. And so I needed to learn. I needed to be able to handle that.”

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This game doesn’t have to be a referendum on the two teams’ legacies and the narratives surrounding them – it’s also an incredibly compelling basketball matchup.

LSU stifled Caitlin Clark with the defense of Alexis Morris last season, but Hailey Van Lith isn’t that player. In fact, Clark ran circles around Van Lith, then with Louisville, earlier in the 2023 tournament. The Tigers have upgraded their perimeter rotation on the wings, however, as Flau’jae Johnson is a more confident and consistent scorer and Mikaylah Williams provides instant offensive firepower. Sydney Affolter and Gabbie Marshall will have their hands full with that dynamic duo and will have to hit shots on the other end to compensate.

Both teams are smaller inside than their 2023 iterations. Iowa’s Kate Martin will have to tend with LSU’s Aneesah Morrow, and Hannah Stuelke will have the unenviable task of containing Angel Reese. Clark might find it easier to get into the lane without a traditional center protecting the paint; nevertheless, Morrow and Reese are quick and cover ground well, which will cause different difficulties for the Hawkeyes’ offense.

Iowa’s attack looked comfortable and was efficient against Colorado. The question is whether that smoothness will translate against an SEC defense that is well-versed in taking opposing teams out of rhythm. LSU can still put up points in bunches, even with a tighter rotation, so the Tigers can keep pace with the Hawkeyes no matter the style of play. Even though Clark is the best player in this game, LSU has the collective length and athleticism to make her life difficult enough. Unless she has a historic shooting night – which is well within the realm of possibility – this rematch could have the same result.

Pick: LSU

ALBANY, N.Y. — This is a game that needs no introductions.

You know the stars. The storylines. The beef. What’s on the line.

Back on Selection Sunday, as the teams were placed into the hellishly packed Albany 2 Region, everyone saw it. Fell out of their chairs. And then crossed their fingers.

The potential matchup everyone noticed is now scheduled. And this game is so many things. Distilled to its most basic terms, it’s simple: Iowa and LSU. Caitlin and Angel. The rematch.

Of course the path to a national title would require one going through the other. Perhaps this matchup should’ve come later than the Elite Eight, but here we are — 40 minutes away from LSU or Iowa cutting down a net and the other team boarding a long, quiet flight home. Not unlike the last time they met.

Less than a year ago, LSU and Iowa faced off in Dallas for the 2023 national championship. The Tigers won 102-85, catching fire from beyond the arc — not a typical trend for them — and giving the tournament’s ending a magical feeling for anyone who saw it. The game — which set a record for television viewership, drawing 9.9 million viewers on ABC and peaking at 12.6 million — acted as a bellwether and a benchmark for women’s basketball.

“You would never think that we would now be considered celebrities from a basketball game,” Angel Reese said. “Things come so fast; life comes so fast. I’m happy with where we are and helping to grow women’s basketball, and I’m going to look back in 40 years and just know that we were trailblazers.”

The title game accentuated the fact that many within the sport have seen coming for decades: Women’s basketball has been pushing closer to a breaking point, one that was hastened by the past several years of coverage and conversation but built by decades of powerful players, programs and coaches. It highlighted the immense talent of some of the brightest stars in the game. It sparked conversation around trash-talking, media coverage, social issues and officiating. It silenced some haters and brought new ones to the game.

In short, women’s college basketball was treated as a legitimate sport.

Since then, LSU and Iowa have gone their separate ways but traveled similar paths as the sport has continued to explode. They returned home, and their players entered a new era in which fame is now part of the deal.

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When Larry Silverberg and his colleague Chau Tran began studying the science of the basketball shot in the early 2000s, Iowa star Caitlin Clark was just a toddler but had yet to walk to the 3-point line, let alone pull up from 5 feet behind the arc. But even with Clark, Stephen Curry and the explosion of the 3 still years away, the jump shot became among the academic focuses for Silverberg and Tran, both of whom are basketball fans and professors in North Carolina State’s mechanical and aerospace engineering department. “Basketball,” Silverberg says, “is highly predictable.”

Formulas that predict whether a pull-up will go through a 10-foot hoop with an 18-inch diameter take into account factors such as release height, launch angle, release speed and backspin. It’s why for years now, robots capable of shooting like top-tier basketball players have developed. Although Clark is no Cue6, her proficiency from deep often looks automatic.

In dissecting the shooting skills of Clark, who broke the women’s Big Ten, NCAA and major-college career scoring records this season, Tran picks up on the 6-foot guard’s high release point. Silverberg notices the arc on her jumper and how her 3-pointer appears to travel on an ideal trajectory. “She’s shooting an optimal shot,” Silverberg says.

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If you are a sports media viewership nerd — (raises hand) — you start to think about what is possible. Seven million viewers? Eight million? Nine million? How high can Monday night go? We are in the middle of the greatest women’s college basketball tournament in history, and Iowa vs. LSU in the Elite Eight is the most anticipated non-Final Four game ever held. The game is a rematch of last year’s national championship, which averaged 9.9 million viewers and peaked at 12.6 million, the most-viewed women’s college basketball game on record.

Last year’s title game was a unicorn. It changed public perception, investment in the sport, everything. The previous record for an NCAA women’s basketball title game in the ESPN era (since 1996) was 5.68 million viewers for UConn’s title win over Oklahoma in 2002. (The previous all-time record, per Sports Media Watch, is believed to be 8.1 million viewers for a Virginia-Stanford national semifinal on CBS in 1992.) LSU’s win over Iowa obliterated it.

Now comes an Elite Eight doubleheader that highlights everything about the evolution of the sport. ESPN will air No. 1 seed Iowa against No. 3 LSU at 7:15 p.m. ET, followed by No. 1 USC vs. No. 3 UConn. The headliners playing in Albany and Portland over those four-plus hours — Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, LSU’s Angel Reese, USC’s JuJu Watkins and UConn’s Paige Bueckers — are massive stars in college basketball, regardless of gender. Ryan Ruocco, Rebecca Lobo and Holly Rowe — the broadcast team that calls the Final Four — will call Iowa-LSU. Beth Mowins, Debbie Antonelli and Angel Gray will call USC-UConn.

“We’re excited for the opportunity to document this,” said ESPN vice president of production Sara Gaiero, the company’s point person for strategic oversight and management of ESPN’s NCAA women’s basketball coverage. “The matchup we have on Monday is something on Selection Sunday everyone was talking about and had circled in anticipation that this could happen. It’s a great opportunity for women’s basketball. There’s so much interest in this game because of everything we saw in the national championship last year, because of this LSU team, and the Caitlin Clark effect.”

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ALBANY, N.Y. — On Monday night, there will be trash-talk.

Not because this is LSU and Iowa, a rematch of the most-watched women’s basketball game ever, and not just because this is Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark, two of the best and most prolific talkers in the game.

There will be trash-talk because this is sports and they are athletes. And these are 40 minutes that can define — and end — college careers. There will be trash-talk because this game matters, deeply and completely, and because the emotions and passions of the players can’t, won’t and shouldn’t be confined to blank faces and empty stares.

There will be trash-talk because, as Reese explained, “Between those lines, we’re not friends, we’re not buddies.” And it would be best if you didn’t want them to be. On the court, they’re athletes, not robots. Competitors, not colleagues.

“Both of us want to win more than anything, and that’s how it should be when you’re a competitor and you get into a situation like this,” Clark said about her similarities between herself and Reese. “That goes for LSU’s entire roster. That goes for Iowa’s entire roster. Every single one of us wants this so bad. We want to advance to the Final Four so bad. … We both grew up loving this game, and we’re going to do anything we can to help our teams win.”

Reese taunted Clark in the final seconds of the 2023 national title game when it was clear the Tigers would be hoisting the trophy. Reese stared at Clark, pointed to her ring finger and did the John Cena “you can’t see me” wave. Clark, who like Reese had done her fair share of trash-talking through the entire tournament, seemed unfazed.

Still, heated conversations ensued among fans, sports shows debated the topic for days, and corners of social media devolved into even more of a hateful space.

Everyone, it seemed, thought it was a big deal … except Reese and Clark.

“I don’t think people realize it’s not personal,” Reese said Sunday. “Once we get out (from) between those lines, if I see you walking down the street, it’s like, hey, girl, what’s up? Let’s hang out. I think people just take it like we hate each other. Me and Caitlin Clark don’t hate each other. I want everybody to understand that.”

“I don’t think Angel should be criticized at all,” Clark said a few days after the national title game on ESPN’s Outside The Lines. “I’m just one that competes and she competed. … I think everybody knew there was gonna be a little trash-talk in the entire tournament. It’s not just me and Angel.”

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ALBANY, N.Y. — Caitlin Clark’s performance Saturday evening reminded Iowa associate head coach Jan Jensen of one of her star guard’s favorite athletes. “Our little quarterback in Caitlin,” Jensen said. “She loves to be Mahomes.”

The Kansas City Chiefs signal caller was an apt comparison as Clark located her teammates streaking upcourt, and when necessary, finding them for a basket. Like Patrick Mahomes, she throws them open, as well. She sees space other mortals often don’t. “She’s got all those receivers,” Jensen added.

The main Iowa receivers against Colorado were Hannah Stuelke, Sydney Affolter and Kate Martin. On countless occasions during the Sweet 16 contest, one (or multiple Hawkeyes) bolted upcourt alongside, or ahead of, Clark. They were the beneficiaries of assist after assist. (Martin added in jest, referring to the Chiefs tight end: “Sure, I’m Travis Kelce. I’m dating Taylor Swift.”)

Clark had 15 dimes, tying a season high, and she moved into third all time in women’s NCAA Division I assists, passing former Gonzaga star Courtney Vandersloot.

From the opening tip of her 29-point performance, Clark controlled the action. She finished with only two turnovers in No. 1 seed Iowa’s 89-68 victory over No. 5 seed Colorado. (She averages 4.9 and suffered 6 against West Virginia in the second round.) Her Sweet 16 assist-to-turnover ratio was her best mark since Jan. 31, although the stakes of Saturday’s action were far higher than for a regular-season road game at Northwestern.

Against the Buffaloes, all of the Hawkeyes starters scored in double figures largely because of Clark’s selflessness. She even got to watch the final 99 seconds from the bench because of her efficiency. “I thought it was a really complete game,” Jensen said. “And that’s probably my favorite part of today.”

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IOWA CITY, Iowa — Kate Martin has carried several nicknames over her six years with Iowa women’s basketball, but one description stands out above all to fellow senior Gabbie Marshall.

“She’s been my rock,” Marshall said. “I’ve never met a better leader than her.”

Every Iowa player says she leans on Martin throughout challenging moments or when she needs a dose of truth. She’s supportive, passionate and disciplined. They say nobody has worn the title “team captain” better than Martin, who has served in that role the last three seasons. No player has garnered as much trust from the coaching staff or has earned the respect of her teammates as Martin. That includes superstar batterymate Caitlin Clark.

“She’s somebody that’s wired the same way as me,” Clark said. “At times that means me and Kate butt heads, but at the end of the day, we know how much we love each other. We step off the court, and it doesn’t matter, we just make each other better.”

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ALBANY, N.Y. — There was joy, because of course there is when a team survives and advances in March. Flau’jae Johnson, who scored 24 points and willed LSU past UCLA, bounded over toward the Tigers’ family and friends in the stands with a big, bright smile.

But about 15 minutes later, Johnson’s guard was back up as she sat next to Angel Reese and Aneesah Morrow during a postgame news conference. So was Reese’s. Morrow’s, too. Yes, the Tigers were happy to be moving on to the Elite Eight. But they know exactly how the world sees them, and they don’t always appreciate it.

“We’re the good villains,” Reese said. “Everybody wants to beat LSU. Everybody wants to be LSU. Everybody wants to play against LSU. You’ve got to realize, like, we’re not any regular basketball team. Coach (Kim Mulkey) talks about it all the time; she calls us ‘The Beatles.’ People run after our bus. People are coming to our games. You’re seeing sellouts, you’re seeing people buying jerseys, you’re seeing more sellouts than the men.

“We’re impacting the game so much, and all of us are super competitive and want to win and do whatever it takes to win. We’re just changing the game.”

Reese noted that she gets criticized for her modeling, which she likes in addition to basketball. “I can do both,” she said. Johnson regularly gets asked about her second career as a rapper. “Flau’jae can do both.”

“We can all do both,” Reese continued. “That’s what people don’t believe. They don’t think that we’re focused, and we prove every single night when we get between those lines, we’re focused. That’s what we’re worried about.”

“Just being able to have teammates that have my back, have teammates, have coaches just have each other’s back this whole time. I don’t care what the outside (world) thinks,” Reese said. “I know what’s going on in that locker room.”

Before the season and at points during it, many outside the program wondered how it would work — adding Hailey Van Lith from Louisville and Morrow from DePaul — with only one basketball to share. And with a coach who is not afraid to say what she wants about all of it (and not afraid to bench a star, either).

“People always tell us how we should act, how we should dress, how we should talk,” Johnson said. “But there’s never been people who have done this before.”

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Results

• No. 14 Rice: 70-60
• No. 11 Middle Tennessee:83-56
• No. 2 UCLA: 78-69

The Tigers pulled out a tight game late against well-matched UCLA. Angel Reese played well in transition and defending in the pick-and-roll, often playing out of position at the five after LSU dealt with early foul trouble. What else can be said about Flau’jae Johnson? She is an absolute star and has completely ascended in the tournament. She gave Kiki Rice and Charisma Osborne fits defensively with her length and quickness, while shining bright offensively, scoring a game-high 24 points. Watching her glide into a swim move with roughly 2 minutes and 11 seconds left in the third quarter was one of those moves you just don’t ever forget as she gave her best Kahleah Copper/Angel McCoughtry impression.

Results

• No. 16 Holy Cross: 91-65
• No. 8 West Virginia: 64-54
• No. 5 Colorado: 89-68

The Hawkeyes meet a familiar foe in the Elite Eight, taking on LSU, the 2023 national champions who beat them in that game. Iowa is coming off a fantastic win over Colorado, with star guard Caitlin Clark notching 15 assists. It felt like every decision she made was the right one. She kept Iowa aggressive and fast, well-timed and on the money. Everything Colorado tried to contain Clark led to easy baskets for her teammates, and she was commanding in how she drove the lane. Playing at or near Iowa’s pace only seems to add fuel to what the Hawkeyes do offensively, so it will be key to see how LSU, a dominant transition team, handles the game.

Eighty-four-year-old Roberta Burkholder, her white parka zipped to her neck, stands alongside her 81-year-old husband, Orval. She arrived here, at the back doors of Indiana University’s Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall, around 7 a.m. It’s now pushing 5:30 in the evening. To their left are Trenton Kemp and his 13-year-old son, Maguire. They flew into town two days prior from Boise, Idaho, and planted at this particular spot around 6:30. Another gentleman, Josh Kennedy, flew in from Norman, Okla., before parking here before dawn.

Chris Coats, a kindly white-haired gentleman dressed head-to-toe in Hoosier gear, came comparatively late, around 8 a.m., but has since become the de facto mayor of this pop-up community. He knows everyone’s backstories, if not all of their names. The lady behind him, Coats explains, was smart enough to pack chicken salad sandwiches, and that fella over there, the one in the overalls? He bought four pizzas and some Wendy’s and generously shared them with everyone.

This cross-section of Americana — young, old, male, female — forms the head of a line that snakes in all directions; so many people in line a 10-year veteran of the security team at IU prays that they all have a ticket to get in the building. They have collected here, at the backdoors of a basketball temple in a basketball-fervent state, to get a glimpse of a basketball shooting star.

Caitlin Clark is no longer merely a basketball player. She is an experience, an outrageously talented athlete swaddled in NIL, social media and female empowerment who encapsulates the zeitgeist of college athletics. Clark shoots, literally and figuratively, into March, trailed by young girls who react to her shots like Swifties to a favorite song, by girl dads giddy to find common ground with their daughters, by long-committed women’s hoops fans thrilled to finally get their long overdue attention, by ordinary hoops fans who simply want to see a good player perform, and by curiosity-seekers hoping to get a glimpse of a phenomenon.

“We came for Caitlin Clark,” says Roberta, the octogenarian, as she and Orval get swallowed by the masses when the Assembly Hall doors finally open. “I’ll do anything once.”

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ALBANY, N.Y. — It truly feels like Christmas morning.

There’s no other accurate way to describe the level of anticipation here ahead of Iowa-LSU’s Elite Eight matchup, a rematch of last year’s record-setting national championship game featuring the sport’s two biggest stars in Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese. But that’s not all that’s happening. JuJu Watkins and USC will take on Paige Bueckers and UConn in Portland as the nightcap.

Four superstars. Two Final Four berths are on the line. One history-making day for women’s basketball on tap.

“If I were a basketball fan, I’d be glued to the TV,” Clark said.

“RIP to the viewership numbers,” USC head coach Lindsay Gottlieb said. “It’s going to crush everything.”

Though both games will be broadcast on ESPN, and not ABC, it seems likely that at least one — cough, Iowa versus LSU — will break the viewership record for a non-Final Four game in the women’s NCAA Tournament. Iowa’s win over West Virginia in the second round last weekend shattered the previous record (set two days prior in the Hawkeyes’ first-round win over Holy Cross) with an average of 4.9 million viewers. You could make a compelling argument that Monday’s rematch is the most highly anticipated game in women’s basketball since the 2004 championship game between UConn and Tennessee. Or at the very least, it’s the most-anticipated women’s matchup since, well, last year.

As we all know, the last time Clark and Reese faced off, a whopping 9.9 million viewers tuned in. So, yeah, people will be interested in the rematch. But they should stick around to see the stars in the second half of the doubleheader, too.

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Our “numbers guy,” Austin Mock, uses advanced statistical models and simulations to project the chances for each team to make it through each round of the tournament. Based on 1 million simulations of the women’s 2024 NCAA Tournament, here is our projected score:

• Projected point spread: LSU -0.5
• Projected total: 170.5
• Projected scores: LSU 85.5, Iowa 85

What happened Sunday in Portland was not only a shame but an unacceptable stain on the NCAA, which just can’t seem to get the women’s tournament right after so much goodwill has been put in after the embarrassing exposure of inequalities versus the men’s tournament in 2021.

Not all were the fault of the NCAA, but this is at least the fourth controversy this season’s tournament has had since the first round began March 22. The Utah women’s basketball team switched hotels out of safety concerns after reporting racial slurs were shouted at the team in Idaho. The team hotel was 30 miles east of Spokane, Wash., where the Utes’ games were set to be played, a distance that was within the rules but in a city that has issues with extremist groups, its mayor said. The NCAA arranged to move the team after the incident.

“For our players and staff to not feel safe in an NCAA Tournament environment, it’s messed up, and so we moved hotels,” coach Lynne Roberts said.

In NC State’s first-round game against Chattanooga, an official was removed at halftime because it was only discovered after tipoff that she had a conflict of interest. A quick Google search shows that Tommi Paris has a master’s degree from … Chattanooga. Earlier this weekend, Notre Dame star Hannah Hidalgo missed four critical minutes of play in a loss to Oregon State after being instructed by an official to remove a nose ring she has worn all season.

And now this.

It’s time for the embarrassing moments to stop overshadowing what has become an incredible time in women’s basketball, both from a competitive standpoint and the star power in the game. UConn coach Geno Auriemma was right when he said Sunday that this year’s Elite Eight games — featuring JuJu Watkins versus Paige Bueckers, Angel Reese versus Caitlin Clark and more — may end up being the most fun the sport has had in ages.

These players are too dominant, these coaches too passionate for amateur hour to take over what is usually the most entertaining postseason in sports.

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