Angel Reese taunts Caitlin Clark during LSU’s championship win

Those actions by Reese, whose stellar play earned her tournament most outstanding player honors, immediately sparked a firestorm online. The word “classless” trended on Twitter, as some users took the Tigers player to task for not being content to let her play alone speak for itself.

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“All year I was critiqued about who I was,” Reese, who was named a first-team all-American for her season-long production, said Sunday at a postgame news conference. “I don’t fit the narrative. I don’t fit in the box that you all want me to be in. I’m too hood, I’m too ghetto. You told me that all year. But when other people do it, y’all don’t say nothing.

“So this is for the girls that look like me, that want to speak up on what they believe in. It’s unapologetically you. It was bigger than me tonight.”

Others involved in the online discussion pointed out that with the wave, Reese appeared to mimic Clark herself two games earlier during Iowa’s victory over Louisville. After footage of Clark making the “You can’t see me” gesture went viral last week, Cena himself expressed his approval.

In other postgame remarks Sunday, Reese also referred to a moment in Iowa’s previous game, a stunning upset of previously undefeated South Carolina, in which Clark appeared to wave dismissively at a Gamecocks player who Clark was daring to shoot by not bothering to guard.

“Caitlin Clark is a hell of a player for sure, but I don’t take disrespect lightly,” Reese said to ESPN. “She disrespected Alexis [Morris of LSU], and South Carolina, they’re still my SEC girls, too. You’re not going to disrespect them, either.”

Making the waving gesture again, Reese added, “I had a moment at the end of the game. I was in my bag, in my moment.”

Taking to Twitter to wade into the lively chatter about the late-game events, Reese made it clear she felt no contrition. She posted photos and video of her gestures, and she wrote in capital letters, “I LOVE BEING A BLACK QUEEN.”

“And no,” Reese tweeted a short time later, “I’M NOT KEEPING IT CUTE.”

Asked about Reese’s actions at Iowa’s news conference, Clark replied, “Honestly, I had no idea. I was just trying to get to the handshake line and shake hands and, you know, be grateful that my team was in that position.

“All you can do is hold your head high, be proud of what you did, and all the credit in the world to LSU,” continued Clark, who became the breakout star of the tournament after a string of scintillating performances. “They were tremendous, they deserve it. … But honestly I had no idea, and I was just trying to spend the last few moments on the court with, especially, the five people that I’ve started 93 games with, and relishing every second of that.”

It’s not the first time Reese, a 20-year-old from the Baltimore area who transferred to LSU from Maryland one year ago, has answered critics of her occasional on-court demeanor.

“I’m from Baltimore where you hoop outside & talk trash,” she tweeted in January. “If it was a boy y’all wouldn’t be saying [nothing] at all. Let’s normalize women showing passion for the game instead of it being ‘embarrassing.’”

When those comments began recirculating Sunday, former NBA player and fellow Baltimore native Tyrone “Muggsy” Bogues tweeted, “Talk that talk,” adding “Baltimore bred” in a hashtag.

“I’m going to be me,” Reese, whose 15 points and 10 rebounds Sunday allowed her to set a Division I single-season record with her 34th double-double, told reporters after the game. “But I can’t do it without the girls here, and I can’t do it without the rest of my teammates and my coaches.

“So Twitter can say what they want to say,” she continued. “I love reading those comments. I have all the screenshots of what everybody has said about me all season. And now what are you going to say?”