Duane Johnson and George Colbert attended UMBC with the former Angel Webb, where she starred in basketball from 1988 to 1992 before eventually being inducted into the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 2015. So when Webb’s daughter, Angel Reese, and LSU visited Coppin State on Wednesday evening, there was never a doubt that Johnson and Colbert would show their support for Reese and Webb.
“She’s like our daughter,” said Colbert, a Reisterstown resident.
Johnson and Colbert were part of a crowd of about 60 ticket holders who showed up three hours before the 6 p.m. tipoff between the reigning national champion Tigers and the host Eagles at the Physical Education Complex in Baltimore. When the doors officially opened at 4 p.m. — 30 minutes earlier than planned — three lines to enter the venue had snaked around the corner of the building.
Reese, a Randallstown native and St. Frances graduate who played in her first NCAA-sanctioned game in the state since March 20, 2022, when she was a member of Maryland’s program, put on a show for the announced 4,100 — the first time the Physical Education Complex had been sold out for any Coppin State athletic event. The 6-foot-3 junior power forward racked up 26 points, six rebounds and five steals, and No. 7 ranked LSU sailed to an 80-48 win for its 13th consecutive victory after opening the season with a stunning 92-78 loss to Colorado.
“Coming back here, this is my home,” Reese said afterwards. “I’m the Baltimore Barbie before I was the Bayou Barbie.”
The opportunity to watch a Tigers squad anointed the preseason favorite to capture another national title and headlined by future WNBA draft picks Reese, graduate student shooting guard Hailey Van Lith (who was told to rest) and junior shooting guard Aneesah Morrow was enough to persuade David and Teri Levine to make the hour-long drive from Potomac and also wait outside three hours before the game’s start.
“If we were going to go, we were going to go all the way,” said Teri Levine, who added that she and her husband switched allegiances from the Terps to LSU after Reese and coach Kim Mulkey moved to the Tigers.
As attention-grabbing as LSU is, many eyes were on Reese, who was serenaded by the loudest cheers when she was introduced and every time she scored or made a steal. Tickets for the game were sold out before the end of November, and as of Tuesday, a general admission ticket that sold for $15 was being sold for between $56 to $324 on SeatGeek.
Reese’s presence was enough to draw Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, who watched the game from the university president’s suite. Lightweight boxing champion Gervonta Davis also attended. Two Ravens players, wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. and inside linebacker Patrick Queen — both of whom played football for the Tigers — were rumored to attend, but didn’t show.
“Angel can score as much as she wants, and I love her to death, but we want Coppin to win,” Scott said during the second quarter. “And anytime we can highlight Baltimore in a positive way and highlight one of our own who is doing great things and highlight an HBCU institution that is doing great things here in West Baltimore, there’s nothing better you could ask for.”
Coppin State had hosted larger Division I foes such as Maryland (three times in 2014, 2017 and 2021 when Reese was a member), Pittsburgh (2022) and Louisville (2007 when Angel McCoughtry, a Baltimore native and St. Frances graduate, was a junior). But athletic director Derek Carter said welcoming LSU was different.
“The Maryland games were big in the past, but never have we had a national champion with a star player with the profile of Angel, and part of that has to do with the climate of college sports and the NIL opportunities that players have now,” he said. “Even two years ago when Maryland was here, that wasn’t the same profile that you have now. So there are just so many different factors available to student-athletes now. So this is bigger than Maryland or Pittsbugh coming in.”
Coppin State went to great lengths for Wednesday night’s game. The school tripled its usual amount of security between campus police and a third-party company.
The university added 200-300 parking spots around campus and through an agreement with owners of Mondawmin Mall on the other side of Gwynns Falls Parkway. Doors to the arena opened 90 minutes earlier versus the usual 60 minutes to reduce long lines and ease the burden on security.
“We just had to kind of magnify and expand some things we already have in place,” Carter said. “We keep saying that at the end of the day, it’s a basketball game.”
But in some ways, it wasn’t a typical game. The school added several more seats behind one baseline for media, and Steven Kramer, director of communications, said the number of requests for media credentials he received reached triple digits. But he estimated that about 40 of those requests came from people who had Instagram accounts and did not work for a publication or outlet. He also hired a few people to handle statistics, which is his area of expertise, so that he could concentrate on dealing with other game-related issues.
The game was a boon for the Eagles, too. Coach Jermaine Woods said the money LSU paid to play at Coppin State — which he declined to specify — would fund the team’s recruiting budget, and he said he hopes the players’ efforts opened fans’ eyes.
“We did what we needed to do to give some excitement to Baltimore,” he said. “We have fans, and when you draw the national champion and Angel, they saw some good basketball. … Tonight we showed Baltimore that there’s something on North Avenue that can be really special.”
Reese sat out four games after getting pulled by LSU coach Kim Mulkey at halftime of the team’s 109-79 win against Kent State on Nov. 14. The reason for Reese’s absence was nebulous as Mulkey described it as “a coach’s decision,” and Reese wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, “please don’t believe everything you read.”
Since her return against then-No. 9 Virginia Tech on Nov. 30, Reese has averaged 21.3 points and 10.8 rebounds, racking up at least 19 points and nine rebounds in each of her last four games. Although junior guard Kateri Poole, one of Reese’s closest friends on the team, was removed from the roster earlier this month, Reese has hardly skipped a beat.
Against Coppin State, Reese finished just two points shy of her season high set against Queens (N.C.) on Nov. 9 and one steal short of her career best established against McNeese State on Dec. 12 before getting pulled with 3:19 left in the game. Reese even engaged in a brief but fiery display of emotion when she and Eagles redshirt junior small forward Charia Roberts, a Pikesville resident and graduate who transferred from Loyola Maryland, got tangled up for a rebound.
“That’s just what I do, that’s where I’m from,” she said. “That’s what we do here in Baltimore. Being able to be back out here and the girls who are out here talking trash, that’s something I’m used to, and I was just happy to be out here with girls that understand that.”
Johnson, the Randallstown resident who knows Reese’s mother and said he canceled his season tickets to the Terps after Reese’s transfer, praised the home team for agreeing to the game against the Tigers.
“I think it’s terrific that she came back to the community because she is a role model for today’s youth,” he said while wearing an Eagles baseball cap. “Her impact is going to be tremendous.”
Although the game was a mismatch on the court, Carter said the chance to host a hometown heroine like Reese and the reigning NCAA champion like LSU was a win for the Eagles.
“We’re going to have people on our campus who have never been to Coppin State, and I think they’ll appreciate all of the good that’s on our campus,” he said. “This is an opportunity for some of our prospective students to visit Coppin and perhaps they may choose Coppin as a destination to further their education whether as undergrad students or graduate students. Anytime we can showcase our great institution, that’s what we’re going to do. So that’s how we’re looking at it – an opportunity to show who we really are.”
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