Biden Invites NCAA Women’s Champs To White House — Says LSU ‘Demonstrated Excellence On And Off The Court’
President Joe Biden invited the NCAA Women’s Basketball champion Louisiana State University team to the White House, praising the team’s “excellence on and off the court.”
On Sunday, LSU defeated the University of Iowa 102-85 to capture the Women’s Basketball National Championship in Dallas. It was the most-watched women’s basketball game of all-time — with an audience of almost 10 million.
On Tuesday morning, President Biden congratulated LSU and men’s champions UConn in a Twitter thread that included an invitation to the White House for both championship teams and high praise for the women’s team. Biden wrote:
In a year when March Madness often lived up to its name, both our women’s champions, @LSU , and men’s champions, @UConn , showed us the best of what this country can be.
Congrats to @LSUwbkb who demonstrated excellence on and off the court. They showed us what it looks like to win with an unrelenting belief in themselves.
And they did it in one of the most-watched women’s sports games in US history.
You have an incredible school, @LSUpresident .
Meanwhile, @UConnMBB returned to glory with a series of dominant performances that were often incredible to watch.
Congratulations to the team for building a program that is set up to build on that success. And @UConnPresident , maybe I’ll see you next time I’m back up on campus.
We can all learn a lot from watching these champions compete — and I look forward to welcoming them at each of their White House visits.
The president’s message comes the day after First Lady Dr. Jill Biden suggested inviting Iowa to the White House along with the champion Louisiana State University team — an idea that LSU star Angel Reese and many others did not love.
Reese is the central figure in a major subplot of that tournament and final: the uproar over a taunt that Reese made during the game that mimicked a taunt by Iowa star Caitlin Clark in a previous game — and the disparate treatment of those events by media observers that many called out as a racist double standard.
