Angel Reese was one of 10 first-time invitees to December’s Team USA senior national team camp, where she’ll join notable names such as Kahleah Copper, Brittney Griner, Caitlin Clark and Paige Bueckers.
And a look at upcoming college basketball matchups, including a Chicago-based company that is bringing a Thanksgiving Day doubleheader to the United Center.
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Every Tuesday, Tribune writers will provide an update on what happened — and what’s ahead — for the Bulls, Sky and local college basketball teams. Want more? Sign up for our Tribune sports newsletter.
Angel Reese earns first Team USA camp invite
A gold medal is one of the many items on an extensive wish list for Angel Reese. And the Chicago Sky forward took her first step toward that goal Monday with her first-ever selection to senior national team camp.
Reese was one of 10 first-time invitees to December’s national team camp, which will take place at Duke. The group includes newcomers Caitlin Clark, Paige Bueckers, Cameron Brink, Sonia Citron, Veronica Burton, Kiki Iriafen, Rickea Jackson, Lauren Betts of UCLA and JuJu Watkins of USC. This young class will join Team USA mainstays Kahleah Copper, Chelsea Gray, Brittney Griner, Kelsey Plum, Jackie Young, Dearica Hamby, Brionna Jones and Aliyah Boston.
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Although this will mark Reese’s camp debut with the senior team, the forward was identified as part of the national team talent pool as a teenager.
Reese attended her first youth national team trials in 2017 at the age of 15, then made it to the final round of cuts for the U-17 World Cup in 2018. She withdrew from contention for the U-19 World Cup in 2019 and 2021 due to outside commitments and health concerns. In 2023, Reese made her debut with the national team in the 2023 FIBA Women’s AmeriCup alongside Betts and Jackson.
This camp will notably feature first-time collaborations between Reese and many of her WNBA contemporaries, including Clark. The pair have voiced enthusiasm about playing together on the national team throughout their last four years as rivals at the collegiate and professional levels.
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“It’s so cool,” Reese said about playing with Clark during the 2024 WNBA All-Star Game. “I know when she gets the ball, I’m running to look for the ball because I know she’s going to throw it. She’s been great to play with. The future — we’re going to be playing with each other a lot. Hopefully, in four years we can be Olympians together.”
A side of college basketball
Mark Starsiak, the senior vice president of college sports for InterSport, has a pitch for Chicago fans. On Thanksgiving Day, after the turkey has been eaten and football has been watched or played, how about some college basketball?
InterSport, the Chicago-based marketing and events agency, will operate the Thanksgiving Classic at the United Center on Thursday. It starts with a Top 25 matchup between No. 4 Duke and coach Jon Scheyer and No. 22 Arkansas and coach John Calipari at 7 p.m. on CBS, followed by Northwestern-Oklahoma State at 9:30 p.m. on Big Ten Network.
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Starsiak called this time of year for his team “organized chaos.” They help manage 68 men’s and women’s games in November and December at sites across the country.
In a span of a couple of weeks, Starsiak was headed to White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., for the Greenbrier Tip-Off, then Jacksonville, Fla., for the Florida-Miami game, then back to West Virginia, then to Fort Myers, Fla., for the Fort Myers Tip-Off, which will include No. 11 Michigan State playing No. 16 North Carolina on Thanksgiving Day on FOX. The Fort Myers tournament is the biggest that InterSport owns and operates, but the company also operates the Players Era tournament in Las Vegas, which hosts 22 men’s and women’s teams.
InterSport has long had a relationship with college basketball, but it has blossomed in the last seven years as they try to make an early-season impact on the sport, Starsiak said.
“It just allows you to kind of take advantage of some of the fans and network opportunities and sponsorship activity at that time of the year,” Starsiak said. “At a more macro level, it’s really important for our sport to have these opportunities and these kind of showcase games during that time. So it reminds everyone that there is good basketball. It’s starting. It’s early. Don’t wait till football is over. Don’t wait till March Madness.”
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Starsiak said he and his team manage relationships with hundreds of basketball programs, coaches and administrators, dozens of venues across the country and a handful of TV partners. They try to keep a pulse on which teams have openings and what types of games, dates, locations and financial details they need.
The Duke-Arkansas game was created about a year ago as CBS expressed interest in expanding its early-season college basketball programming. Then it was finding the right teams that wanted the CBS exposure and the right venue. The return of Scheyer, a Northbrook native, to Chicago was a draw for a United Center game.
“You’ve got to feel like you have a tie-in to ask fans and people to spend their holidays with you watching college basketball,” Starsiak said. “I think with Coach Scheyer being from Chicago, both coaches and schools being very national brands … big cities and where folks want to travel and may reside, Chicago checked all those boxes for us.”
Northwestern was already committed to play in the Greenbrier and was looking for a neutral site game. Given coach Chris Collins’ relationship with Scheyer from his time coaching him at Duke and Northwestern’s branding as Chicago’s Big Ten Team, the event made sense.
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The Wildcats went 1-1 over the weekend in the Greenbrier, losing 83-78 to Virginia and beating South Carolina 79-77. Now, they’ll play Oklahoma State on Thursday before meeting the Cowboys next season in Oklahoma City.
December Bulls broadcast moved to Amazon Prime
A hot start helped the Chicago Bulls earn a little more attention from national viewership.
The NBA announced Monday that the Dec. 26 game against the Philadelphia 76ers will be moved off CHSN onto Amazon Prime. The league holds the right to flex a certain portion of the schedule onto exclusive national broadcasts to adapt to changes in interest throughout the season. The game will now tip off at 6:30 p.m.
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The Bulls were only slotted to play three games on national television this season — Dec. 1 against Orlando (Peacock), Jan. 16 against Brooklyn (ESPN) and Feb. 5 at Toronto (Amazon Prime). The team was not selected for any major holiday games including Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Day or Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
This schedule reflected relatively underwhelming expectations for the Bulls after three consecutive years of missing the playoffs following play-in tournament losses. But after a 9-7 start that included 11 clutch games, the Bulls are beginning to drive buzz as a potential playoff team in the Eastern Conference.
Number of the week: 8
Points scored by No. 18 USC in the fourth quarter of No. 19 Notre Dame’s 61-59 victory Friday.
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Hannah Hidalgo hit a pull-up jumper with 1.9 seconds to play to lift the Irish to their comeback victory. She had 22 points, seven rebounds and five of Notre Dame’s 16 steals. It was an important bounce-back win for the Irish after they lost 93-54 to No. 6 Michigan on Nov. 15.
Week ahead: Bulls
Friday: at Charlotte Hornets (NBA Cup), 6:30 p.m. (CHSN)
Saturday: at Indiana Pacers, 7 p.m. (CHSN)
Monday: at Orlando Magic, 6:30 p.m. (Peacock)
Friday marks the final game of the NBA Cup group stage for the Bulls, who will play the Hornets on the road in Charlotte. But the Bulls are essentially eliminated from advancement in the tournament after losing their last two NBA Cup games to the Milwaukee Bucks and the Miami Heat.
The Bulls enter Friday’s game ranked fourth in East Group C, which also includes the New York Knicks. The Bucks sit atop the group with a 2-0 record, while the Heat are attempting to jump the queue with a 2-1 record and a 47-point differential to their advantage. The Bulls sit one loss behind the Knicks and also carry a minus-42 point differential into the final game of the group stage, which will hinder their ability to climb up into a wild-card spot.
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Guard Kevin Huerter expressed frustration after a blowout loss to the Miami Heat tanked Chicago’s chances of advancing in the tournament, noting that the game was the team’s fourth in seven days — and taking place on the first night of a back-to-back.
“It’s tough in a Cup game like this, for how important the NBA wants to make these games and the type of schedule we’re on to do it,” Huerter said. “Would’ve liked a different opportunity.”
Week ahead: Best college basketball games
Nov. 27: Northwestern vs. Oklahoma State at the United Center, 9:30 p.m., BTN
Northwestern’s men’s team enters the neutral-site game 5-1 after pulling off a 79-77 win over South Carolina at the Greenbrier Tip-Off. Arrinten Page made the winning layup for the Wildcats’ second two-point victory of the season after they topped DePaul 81-79.
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Oklahoma State, led by Vyctorius Miller’s 17.5 points per game average, has cruised to 6-0 against unranked teams.
Nov. 28: No. 13 Illinois vs. No. 5 UConn at Madison Square Garden, 11:30 a.m., FOX
The Illini men’s team went 1-1 in its first two games against ranked teams, topping No. 20 Texas Tech 81-77 at home and losing 90-86 to No. 8 Alabama at the United Center. Now, they face their biggest test yet on the road against a 5-1 UConn team that has lost only to No. 2 Arizona.
Illinois will hope for a better showing than its last trip to Madison Square Garden. Last February, Duke beat the Illini there 110-67, the worst loss in program history.
Quotable
“For three quarters, we were very soft. We gave no resistance. We didn’t do anything that we talked about. We just played really soft. It was really bad.” — Nikola Vučević refusing to celebrate after the Bulls pulled off a 16-point comeback for a 121-120 win over the Washington Wizards