Hailey Van Lith and Angel Reese are set to rejoin forces on the court docket this summer season.
The Chicago Sky ensured that Monday evening, once they chosen her No. 11 total within the 2025 WNBA Draft.
Shortly after Van Lith heard her identify known as, Reese took to social media to precise her pleasure.
“We ain’t do it right the first time,” Reese wrote on X, previously Twitter. “Let’s run it backkkkk.”
The sensation was mutual.
“Excited to be around her again,” Van Lith mentioned.
Van Lith performed with Reese at LSU for the 2023-24 season, dropping within the Elite Eight to UCLA. After that season, Reese was drafted No. 7 total, and Van Lith transferred to TCU.
During the last 12 months, the 2 have maintained contact, and Van Lith mentioned they’ve “mutual respect” for one another as ladies and gamers.
“We have a lot of similarities with how we carry ourselves and our mindset,” Van Lith mentioned. “She’s a dog, man. She turns up her intensity with everyone around her so I’m excited to be in that environment with her again, where she can pull more out of me than I think I have.”
Van Lith was the second of back-to-back picks the Sky had in Monday’s draft. Chicago picked Slovenian ahead Ajša Sivka with the No. 10 decide.
Expert 6-foot-7 middle Sedona Prince didn’t hear her identify known as at Monday’s draft.
Prince was projected to go as excessive as late first spherical, however a sequence of regarding allegations had made her one of many hardest WNBA prospects to guage.
A number of ladies have accused Prince of sexual assault or abuse in latest months.
She additionally confronted backlash from followers, with greater than 200,000 individuals signing a Change.org petition to have her faraway from the TCU ladies’s basketball workforce.
Prince denied these allegations in a social media put up in August and has not been charged with any crime.
After going undrafted, there’s nonetheless the likelihood for Prince to be signed to a training-camp contract or proceed a taking part in profession abroad.
Prince, 24, had her faculty profession derailed quite a few occasions by accidents. Final season with TCU — her third faculty in seven years, she averaged 17.2 factors, 9.4 rebounds, three blocks and a couple of.4 assists and helped the Horned Frogs to this system’s first Elite Eight.
With the present collective bargaining settlement set to run out after this season, the Ladies’s Nationwide Basketball Gamers Affiliation has been very clear about what its high priorities are for the subsequent deal.
Gamers are combating for larger wages, a brand new financial mannequin and improved advantages.
However WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert has repeatedly mentioned the brand new CBA can be “transformational,” she mentioned on Monday that it’ll additionally must be “fair.”
“We want to have a fair deal for all, but it has to be within the confines of a sustainable economic model that goes on for 10 years,” Engelbert mentioned.
Engelbert mentioned negotiations stay ongoing. She mentioned the gamers union “recently” despatched a proposal to the league and the 2 sides plan to satisfy on the bargaining desk within the close to future.
“I’m very optimistic that we’ll get something done,” Engelbert mentioned, “and it’ll be transformational.”
