Last Updated on April 6, 2023
The national champion LSU women’s basketball team rejected an attempt by Jill Biden to invite herself into their locker room for a pre-game pep talk before they took on Iowa in the NCAA women’s national championship game, according to the team’s star player, Angel Reese.
LSU basketball player Angel Reese told a pair of interviewers that Jill Biden attempted to invite herself into the team’s locker room for a pep talk before the women’s basketball national championship game, but that the team rejected her.
“Apparently, she (Jil Biden) was supposed to come to our locker room before the game but we said no,” recounted Angel Reese. “She was supposed to come to our locker room and go to Iowa’s locker room. I don’t know if she talked to them, I don’t know if she did, but we said we didn’t want to. We didn’t want her coming to the locker room,” Reese explained.
The revelation that the LSU women’s basketball rejected Jill Biden’s self-invitation to the locker room comes as Biden is being hammered in the basketball world for the “racist” invitation that she issued to the women’s team from Iowa, to join LSU for a celebration at the White House. Historically, only championship teams, not runner-ups, are invited to celebrate with the President and his family. Because the Iowa team is mostly white, and the LSU team is mostly black, Jill Biden has been slammed as racist, with claims that if the winners and losers were reversed, she wouldn’t be at all interested in bringing a runner-up LSU team to DC.
After the racial sports faux pas, Jill Biden attempted to apologize, but in the same interview in which Angel Reese revealed her team had rejected the attempted locker room pep talk, Reese told the interviewers that she doesn’t accept the apology. Reese has declined the invitation to the Biden White House and says that she’d rather celebrate with the Obamas.
“I don’t accept her apology, because of, she said what she said,” Reese explained.
“[Jill Biden] felt like [Iowa] should’ve came [to the White House] because of sportsmanship, right? They can have that spotlight. We’ll go to the Obamas. We’ll see Michelle. We’ll see Barack.”
Watch Angel Reese explain the multi-faceted rejection of Jill and Joe Biden below:
Angel Reese declines Jill Biden’s invitation to the White House
“We’ll go to the Obamas”
(Via @IAMATHLETEpod )
— NBACentral (@TheNBACentral) April 5, 2023
Related: Jill Biden Apologizes After Comparing Hispanic Community to ‘Breakfast Tacos’
Much like the exchanges between Jill Biden and the team from LSU, the entire women’s NCAA basketball tournament has been littered with accusations of racism, largely because Caitlin Clarke, the Iowa star player who wowed a national audience, received positive media coverage while also being white.
After the championship game, Angel Reese stalked Clarke around the court to taunt her, using the same “you can’t see me” hand gesture that Clarke briefly flashed to one of her coaches in a previous game. Reese has been heavily criticized for the taunt, criticism that she says is a direct result of anti-black racism within basketball.