Sports history is replete with tales of sibling rivalry and revelry. In baseball, there are the Niekros, the Alous and, of course, the Aarons and Ripkens.
In football, the Manning brothers have stepped neatly from Hall of Fame quarterbacking careers to brilliance in the television booth, while the Watt brothers, J.J., T.J. are defensive wizards, as their younger bro, Derek, makes his way on offense.
Hockey has produced the Potvins and the Howes, Marty and Mark with their father, Gordie and his brother, Vic.
Admittedly, the list of famous basketball siblings is light, save for Steph Curry and his brother, Seth. But there might be an addition on the horizon and with a twist. Down at College Park, the Reese family is producing a duo that may join the list of successful siblings, but this pairing is of a sister and a brother. This year’s Terp teams feature Angel, a sophomore on the fourth-ranked women’s squad and Julian, a freshman on the men’s team, ranked 21st in the country.
The Reeses are highly-touted recruits from St. Frances Academy here in Baltimore. Julian, a 6-foot-9 power forward, was rated with four stars before coming to Maryland and was 44th-ranked overall nationally.
He gained a reputation as a talented defender, though through his first three games at Maryland , Julian is tied for fourth on the team in scoring with an 8-point per game average, helping the Terps to a 3-0 mark.
Meanwhile, Angel, who is 6-foot-3 and plays both inside and on the perimeter, was the nation’s second-ranked high school prospect the year before.
She burst onto the scene with a combined 36 points in her first two games, including 16 in a brilliant performance against nationally ranked Arkansas.
Angel would almost certainly have been ranked among the best freshmen in the country last year had she not suffered a leg fracture in the third game of the season, against Towson.
The injury cost her 14 games and a place along more celebrated players Paige Bueckers of Connecticut and Iowa’s Caitlin Clark.
As it was, Angel was named to the Big Ten’s All Freshman team and entered this season as a force to be reckoned with on a Maryland unit that has national championship aspirations.
So far, Angel leads the team in scoring and rebounding and may emerge as a candidate for National Player of the Year honors, especially if the team goes far in the NCAA tournament.
That the Reese siblings are gifted basketball players is, in a sense, a no-brainer, given their lineage.
Their mother, also named Angel, is a member of the UMBC Athletics Hall of Fame. As a Retriever, playing under the name Angel Webb, she landed in the all-time top 10 in a host of different categories where she remains nearly 20 years after she graduated.
In her playing days, Angel Webb wore the number 10, which is retired, never to be worn again at UMBC.
Her children, Angel and Julian, also wear 10 in College Park, with the hopes that they will be first siblings to see their numbers hang in the rafters there. That would be some sister-brother act.
And that’s how I see it for this week.
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