Caroline Bradley really committed to LSU in February. The world just didn’t find out about it until April, when her family threw a big crawfish boil on the land it owns in Northeast Louisiana.
Bradley didn’t feel the need to wait a few more months – or schedule a few more visits. The 6-foot-5 basketball phenom from a small town named Oak Grove was dead set on coach Kim Mulkey’s Tigers three months before she even wrapped up her junior year of high school, as she told The Advocate on Tuesday.
“I was ready,” Bradley said. “I knew what my ultimate decision was gonna be, and I didn’t want to drag people along or give them false hope.”
So Bradley shut down her recruitment quickly, a move she’ll formalize when the NCAA opens its early signing window on Wednesday. The LSU women’s basketball program has only one 2027 commit to sign, and she’s an important one.
Bradley isn’t just one of the best players Louisiana has ever produced; she’s also one of the three best recruits in the country, according to ESPN rankings, which means she has the talent to one day become the driving force behind a Final Four run. It could happen at LSU as soon as next season.
Bradley has the same recruiting pedigree that Mikaylah Williams had in 2023. She’s one of six players who have won the Louisiana Gatorade Player of the Year award multiple times since its inception in 1985, and in her junior season at Oak Grove, she averaged 27 points, 16.9 rebounds, 3.4 blocks, 2.4 assists and 1.4 steals per game.
Mulkey and her staff recruited other high-profile 2027 recruits, such as Jezelle “GG” Banks (South Carolina), Qandace Samuels (Texas) and Zaniya Johnson (South Carolina), but Bradley was their top priority.
The Oak Grove star said she first met Mulkey when she was in seventh grade. Her recruitment gradually picked up across the five years that followed – to the point at which Bradley was driving three-and-a half hours south to the Pete Maravich Assembly Center multiple times a season.
Sometimes, at the end of a big regular-season game or NCAA Tournament contest, you could spot Mulkey walking down the tunnel to the LSU locker room with Bradley by her side. The 6-5 North Louisiana-born center would have to bend down to hear what Mulkey, the 5-4 former Louisiana Tech point guard, wanted to tell her.
“Once they knew what was important to me,” Bradley said, “and figured out how important relationships were to me across the board, they worked super hard.”
Bradley was looking for a winning program that “cared about me,” she said, as an athlete and as a person. LSU offered her a chance to represent her home state, too, but as they say in Louisiana, that unique benefit was lagniappe.
“I take pride in that,” Bradley said, “but at the end of the day, it didn’t come down to it just being a Louisiana school.
“It came down to the work that coach Mulkey and her staff did, and then how she knows how to win but also care for her players and develop her players not only as athletes but as people too.”
Now, Bradley has a chance to become Mulkey’s next great post player. Brittney Griner. Kalani Brown. Lauren Cox. Angel Reese. Aneesah Morrow. All the sixth-year LSU coach’s best teams have been anchored by star frontcourt players. The Tigers won their national title in 2023 largely because the 6-3 Reese and the 6-4 LaDazhia Williams were forces down low.
That’s why getting Bradley to commit early – and put pen to paper on Wednesday – was so important for LSU.
“They knew how much I love the state of Louisiana,” Bradley said, “how much I’m proud to be from here. Just to be able to leave a lasting impact for years to come, and to be able to do that in my home state, is gonna be a really cool opportunity for sure.”
