LSU women’s basketball lands top transfer, Hailey Van Lith, from Louisville

On Thursday, former Louisville guard Hailey Van Lith announced that she will be transferring to LSU and will be playing with the Tigers for the 2023-24 season.

At Louisville in the 2022-23 season, Van Lith averaged 19.7 points per game, 4.5 rebounds per game and 3.2 assists per game while shooting 41.1% from the field. 

Van Lith has been a prominent figure in the uprising of women’s college basketball. The 5-foot-7 guard has one of the biggest social media platforms in college sports with 721,000 followers on Instagram, 78,000 followers on Tik Tok and 29,000 followers on Twitter. 

According to on3.com, she has the No. 98 ranked NIL valuation, and the No. 5 ranked valuation in women’s college basketball.

To put this in perspective, Angel Reese holds the No. 1 ranked valuation in women’s college basketball with 3.9 million total social media followers, and Flau’jae Johnson ranks at No. 2 with 2.2 million total social media followers. The addition of Van Lith to this coming season’s team brings even more eyes to the Tigers.

But more importantly, the addition of Van Lith gives LSU even more talent to defend its national championship. In Louisville’s four games in the NCAA Tournament, she scored over 20 points in each game. In mid-January, she scored a season-high of 29 points against Virginia Tech, who ended up being a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

With Alexis Morris going to the WNBA, Van Lith fills a hole in the guard play for next season’s team. With her experience in the bright lights, LSU fans will expect her to do big things in Baton Rouge.