A women’s basketball star confirms she’s returning to this SEC powerhouse

There’s been a lot of speculation about what Flau’Jae Johnson’s next move was going to be.

Some thought that the LSU junior might leave school a year early and declare for the WNBA Draft, where she likely would have been a top 10 pick this season. But the draft and the deadline to declare for it came and went.

And then folks started wondering if Johnson was going to return to LSU, where she’s been a starter for three seasons, or enter the transfer portal.

Earlier this month, she teased a “major announcement” in an Instagram post finished the caption with “4 junior year out!” While that initially added some fuel to the fire surrounding the possibility of Johnson transferring, she quieted some of those theories the next day by announcing that she was going on tour. Johnson has a successful career off the court as a hip-hop artist, with one of her songs being used in a Powerade commercial during the NCAA Tournament.

If any whispers about Johnson transferring lingered, she put them to rest once and for all on Wednesday — the day that the portal closes for women’s college basketball.

“Yes, I’m coming back to LSU,” Johnson told Front Office Sports.

She added: “It’s going to be me, allowing Coach (Kim) Mulkey to coach the hell out of me,” Johnson said. “Just so everybody else falls in line. I’m going to have to be the one to take that to show an example, this is the standard here. I’m ready to do that. I wasn’t ready to do that in my previous years. Now, I know what it takes.”

Johnson was tabbed as a four-star recruit by ESPN coming out of Marietta, Georgia’s Sprayberry High School in 2022, where she was ranked as the 26th-best recruit in her class. She became a starter right away for Mulkey’s LSU, averaging 11 points, 5.9 rebounds and 1.9 assists per game for a Tigers’ team that won the national championship in 2023 with Angel Reese leading the way.

This past season, with Reese off in the WNBA, it was Johnson and Aneesah Morrow’s turn to lead the squad. LSU advanced to the Elite Eight where, despite Johnson’s 28 points, the Tigers fell to UCLA.

Johnson was the SEC Rookie of the Year in 2023, an AP All-American this past season, and has twice been named to an NCAA Tournament All-Region Team. This season, she averaged 18.6 points, 5.6 rebounds, 2.5 assists and 1.7 steals per game while shooting 46.8 percent from the floor, 38.3 percent from 3-point land and 81 percent from the charity stripe.

LSU will look a lot different this coming season with Morrow off in the WNBA, Shayeann Day-Wilson having exhausted her eligibility, and players like Sa’Myah Smith, Jersey Wolfenbarger, Last-Tear Poa and Mjracle Sheppard entering the transfer portal. They’ve already gotten one reinforcement via the portal in landing former Notre Dame center Kate Koval.

And as long as Johnson is around, the Tigers will look like a contender.