Angel Reese Is Competitive With Her Little Brother—Except For This One Thing
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March Madness kicks off today for the women’s teams, and there will be plenty of eyes on Angel Reese as her LSU Tigers play their first game on Friday, March 22nd.
With all of the attention on the 21-year-old this season, people have a lot of questions about Angel’s family, including her brother Julian "Juju" Reese. Like his sister, Julian plays Division I basketball.
But who is Julian Reese and what is his relationship with his sister? Here’s the deal.
Julian is a power forward for the Maryland Terrapins.
Julian is a junior who plays for the University of Maryland Terrapins basketball team. He’s a power forward who is 6’9”, according to his school bio. (His sister is 6’3”, for what it’s worth.)
While the Terrapins didn’t make the NCAA tournament this year and last year, Julian made a March Madness appearance with the team during his freshman year. This year, he was an All-Big Ten Honorable Mention and finished the Big Ten Tournament with 12 points, six rebounds, three assists, and two blocks in a first-round victory against Rutgers.
In his freshman year, he played in 32 games and averaged 5.7 points and 4.4 rebounds per game.
Julian was also a four-star recruit out of high school, where he was ranked the 44th overall player in his recruiting class.
He’s the younger brother of Angel.
Julian is a 20-year-old junior and Angel is a 21-year-old senior, making them pretty close in age.
Both of their parents played professional basketball. Their mom, Angel Webb Reese was on the team at University of Maryland at Baltimore County and later was a professional player in Luxembourg. Their dad, Michael Reese, played basketball at Boston College and Loyola University. He later played professional basketball overseas, ESPN says.
“My mom coached me and my brother,” Angel previously told Women’s Health. “Growing up, my mom coached a younger girl’s team, and they were fifth graders and I was in the third grade. I used to bounce the basketball around the gym while she's practicing and coaching and stuff. And I loved it.”
They attended the same college.
Before Angel became an LSU star, she played for two years at Maryland. One year after she enrolled, her brother followed in her footsteps.
The siblings staged a sweet surprise announcement when Julian committed on Mother’s Day in 2020. Julian told the Baltimore Sun that he called his mom downstairs and handed her a black sweatshirt that had a picture of Julian and Angel on a visit to Maryland on the front and the word “committed” on the back.
“It meant a lot to me,” Julian told the outlet in June 2020. “I felt like that was [my mom’s] top pick too, so I feel like that would have been a good surprise for Mother’s Day.”
“It makes for a good storyline indeed,” their mom said. “However, I think it puts different pressures on both of them. For Angel, she is so highly ranked, so there’s a lot of pressure for her to immediately do well. And for Julian, he’s playing at the same school where his sister is already known. So he’s expected to do well.”
He and Angel are pretty competitive.
Angel and Julian are both star players, so it's natural for some of that competitive nature to come home.
“Basketball became something that I just was super passionate about because my brother also played and I wanted to be better than my brother,” Angel said. “So we competed for a long time in front of our driveway and growing up with basketball in the family, it was just like, this is just what I love and it's in the blood.”
Angel also said that both she and her brother had full ride scholarships for basketball. “I love that me and my brother were able to go to college for free,” she said. “It's just something that was always important to me.”
Last year, the two hilariously debated things like who was the favorite kid and who had better shoes on Instagram.
They love to joke about each other.
In an October 2023 Q&A posted on March Madness’ YouTube, an interviewer asked both siblings the same questions—and they gave hilariously opposite answers.
When asked who would always win when they were little, both Angel and Julian said themselves. When they told Angel that Julian said he would beat her 100 to 20 times, she said, “100 to 20?! He’s out of his mind."
Both said each other when asked who was their parents’ favorite, however, they agreed that Angel was the troublemaker.
“I probably was the troublemaker because I would do it, and he would get in trouble for it,” she said.
He’s one of Angel’s biggest fans.
Julian and Angel are close. He calls her his best friend and role model, and Sportskeeda points out that they train together in the offseason.
“I’m always texting her before games,” he said. “I’m always telling her good luck.”
Angel is a protective older sister.
After the NCAA approved name, image and likeness (NIL) deals in 2021, Angel immediately began to take advantage of the opportunities—and tried to included her brother in her ventures, per PEOPLE.
She told Sports Illustrated in March 2022 that she always planned to sign deals with Julian. And whenever businesses tell her they’re looking for a male athlete to partner with, she suggests her brother.
“They’re like, ‘Do you know any players?’ And I’m like, ‘My brother?’ ” she said. “I try to include him in as many deals as I can because once I’m able to leave here [Maryland], hopefully we can sign with the same agency and do everything together, and my mom can just be right there, too. I think it’ll be easy for both of us.”
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