Hailey Van Lith and LSU Are a Perfectly Lethal Match

The Tigers are returning much of their championship core from last season, but the Louisville transfer should seamlessly fill the void left by top guard Alexis Morris.

Kirby Lee/USA TODAY Sports

One of the biggest names in the transfer portal has picked her new program: Hailey Van Lith has announced she will be joining the reigning champs at LSU.

It’s hard to think of a better fit. Van Lith shone in three years at Louisville, a crafty, playmaking guard who showed marked improvement each season. (She received her degree and is transferring as a graduate student with two seasons of eligibility remaining.) LSU, meanwhile, will be returning much of its champion core from last season, led by Angel Reese, who will remain a double-double machine in the post, and Flau’jae Johnson, who should continue to develop on the perimeter. But the Tigers lost their top guard, Alexis Morris, who was drafted by the Sun with the 22nd pick. That lays the groundwork for a perfect match here. After three consecutive Elite Eight runs with the Cardinals, Van Lith will get a chance to go for a championship with the Tigers, and fresh off the first title in program history, LSU will be able to fill their biggest need by adding a brilliant guard in Van Lith.

LSU coach Kim Mulkey had already shown the ability to integrate transfers into her program quickly. (Nine of the players on her championship squad were in their first year with the team.) Now, she gets to do it again with one of the most dynamic players in the college game.

A touted prospect out of high school in Cashmere, Wash.—she was part of the Team USA squad that won the U-19 World Cup in 2019—Van Lith’s game has grown in college. She’s been notably durable, starting 101 of the 102 games Louisville has played since ’20, and her development has been obvious year-over-year:

Season	PPG	APG
2020–21	11.1	2.1
2021–22	14.4	2.2
2022–23	19.7	3.2

Still, there’s room for improvement. Her three-point game is not a particular strength: Van Lith shot 29% while trying to take more shots from beyond the arc last season. While she can be an intense defender, she didn’t often draw the assignment of the opposing leading scorer in her first three years of college. But what she lacks in size—Van Lith is 5’7”—she makes up for in ferocity. That was on full display at Louisville, where fans witnessed her ability to take over a game seemingly by force of sheer will.

At LSU, she will join a backcourt with Johnson and Kateri Poole, both of whom spent much of last season playing off-ball. What the Tigers needed was a true scorer and playmaker. That role was filled last year by Morris and, to a lesser extent, Jasmine Carson, who graduated after a memorable shooting performance in the championship game. Van Lith should be able to do that for LSU—and then some.

This move seemed to be a strong possibility from the jump. Van Lith marked herself as “do not contact” when she entered the portal, suggesting she already had a decent idea of where she wanted to go, and Mulkey recruited her out of high school back when the veteran coach was at Baylor. Van Lith’s campus visit to LSU earlier this month was much discussed. Her addition makes a team who already had its eyes on a championship repeat all the more powerful.

One other factor to note? The pairing of Van Lith and Reese will set the bar high for trash talk. These are two of the finest practitioners in the game, and now, they’ll be teammates.

As for the program Van Lith is leaving behind, Louisville has already started the process of reloading. They’ve brought on two big-name guards in Jayda Curry (a junior transfer from Cal) and Kiki Jefferson (a graduate student from James Madison). Both were starters at their past schools and averaged more than 15 points last season. Coach Jeff Walz has also moved to fortify the group with additional transfers including Hennie van Schaik (a forward from Cal State Bakersfield) and Nina Rickards (guard from Florida). Which only underscores the point here: The transfer portal has changed the game with substantial parity and movement for women’s basketball. There’s no going back.