"Overrated"- Angel Reese gets called out for her "cringe" speech at the ESPYS award ceremony, draws comparisons with her rival Caitlin Clark

LSU v Iowa
Angel Reese during the LSU v Iowa championship game

Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark are the two leading lights in women's college basketball after their memorable duel in the NCAA tournament. The debate around the pair has been raging for a while now and it reared its head again during the ESPY ceremony.

Angel Reese won the Best Breakthrough Athlete award at the ESPY Awards held at the Dolby Theatre, Los Angeles. She won it over fellow nominees, Caitlin Clark of the Iowa Hawkeyes and Brock Purdy of the San Francisco 49ers.

At the end of her acceptance speech, Reese repeated John Cena's, 'you can't see me' gesture that she used to taunt Clark during LSU's win over Iowa in April. The gesture reopened the debate about sportsmanship that raged on social media after Reese did it back then.

Reese who is fresh from her exploits at the Americup, where she led Team USA to silver, also promised LSU fans another title.

"Last year I transferred from the University of Maryland to play at LSU, and I just joined a family," Reese said. "So I just want to say thank you, and another natty is coming, period."

The debate back then took a tangent towards race because Caitlin Clark also used it during her team's Elite Eight victory over the Cardinals. When Reese did it, the criticism was brutal and immediate, evolving the debate towards racial matters.

Some basketball fans were not pleased by the latest gesture from Reese and vented their frustrations on Twitter.

Clark did win her own award, bagging the Best Female College Athlete in a field that contained Trinity Thomas of Florida Gymnastics and Jordy Bahl of Oklahoma.

The Angel Reese versus Caitlin Clark debate

The debate over who the better player is evolved into who deserved the various awards on offer. The most hotly debated one was the award for the Most Outstanding Player, which was awarded to Reese after her team won the title.

Some fans believe that Clark deserved it more for an outstanding tournament where she broke the record for the number of points scored with 191. Her back-to-back 40-point efforts in the Elite Eight and Final Four were lauded as the most dominant showing by a college basketball player.

Angel Reese did break the NCAA record for most double-doubles in a season with 34 and went on to win the championship with LSU. The debate then shifted to Reese's sportsmanship, and it divided fans of the two prospects into two camps.

The Angel Reese versus Caitlin Clark conversation has more than a few chapters left to go with another college basketball season on the horizon.

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