Inside Mikaylah Williams’ fishing trips with an LSU legend | LSU

The fish don’t know it, but sometimes they have to outmaneuver two LSU basketball greats. They’re just bass, swimming through a private creek in Baker, where they live on an 18-acre property that juts up against the Comite River.

Seimone Augustus drops in a line every now and then. Sometimes, Mikaylah Williams bobs and drags another nearby. The fish tend to bite here, on the nice-sized swath of land that Augustus’ parents own in the northern suburbs of Baton Rouge. It’s a quiet part of town, which makes it an ideal setting for the two like-minded hoopers to unwind and decompress.

“Those are the moments,” Augustus said, “where sometimes you’re not even talking. You’re just enjoying each other’s presence.”

Picture it. Two Louisiana-born basketball prodigies. Two LSU stars. One dock, one creek and one shared experience that bridges Williams across the 20 seasons that have floated by since Augustus found herself in a similar position to the one Williams is in now.

Williams took up fishing about four years ago. One of her longtime family friends, a Bossier City-born Air Force veteran named Charles Thompson, is the coach of LSU-Shreveport’s nationally ranked fishing program. The basketball star he considers a niece didn’t show much interest in his sport when she was growing up, but that changed the day she decided to grab a rod, follow her “Uncle T” onto the water and reel in a few fish.

“And then she kind of latched onto it,” Thompson said. “It’s pretty dadgum awesome.”

Williams’ hobby now serves as a metaphor of sorts for her LSU career. It demands patience. There’s an element of pursuit to it as well. A search for something that could come up empty just as easily as it could deliver a prize, but one that’s worth waiting for.

Williams is one of the best basketball players ever born in Louisiana. She grew up in Bossier City, and once she decided to play her college basketball at LSU, it was clear that the proud program coach Kim Mulkey revived six years ago would one day be hers. The 6-foot guard has that kind of talent.

Now that day is here. Williams is a senior, and when the 2026-27 season tips off at 7 p.m. Monday (SEC Network) in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center against Southeastern Louisiana, she won’t have to share the spotlight with a star player who arrived in Baton Rouge before her. Angel Reese is gone. Now Flau’jae Johnson is, too.

Williams has a running mate in former South Carolina guard MiLaysia Fulwiley. But Williams is by far LSU’s longest-tenured player, which means that she’ll have a large say over whether the program can return to the Final Four for the first time since it won the national title in 2023.

She has played in two Elite Eights and one Sweet 16. Duke stole her third crack at a national championship in April when it ended her junior season with a buzzer-beating 3-pointer that rolled torturously around the rim before it slipped through the net.

Williams can play two more years at LSU, but because she’s widely expected to be chosen with one of the first few picks of the 2027 WNBA Draft, the chances of her returning to Baton Rouge for a fifth season are slim.

So this is likely it. The last chance for LSU to compete for a title on the skills of a player Louisiana produces about once every generation. A player like Augustus, who’s now an assistant coach to Mulkey and a mentor/fishing partner to Williams.

The senior guard enjoys fishing because it’s “calming,” she said. It gives her a “sense of peace,” and it often rewards her patience. Williams likes “the motion of casting” and “just being able to think and sit out there with your thoughts.”

Thompson agrees. When asked to theorize why his niece became an avid angler, he’s willing to go a little further.

“It’s the chase,” he said. “It’s a competition against the fish. You know you’re not guaranteed to catch anything.”

‘She chose to stay’

Edric Dennis had the perfect plan. He’d meet his prospective client and her family at a Shreveport restaurant of their choice. There, he’d make his pitch.

At the time, Williams was a high-profile recruit gearing up for the start of her collegiate career. NIL was a new thing. Dennis, a former TCU guard turned agent and manager, wanted to help her navigate that world, so he hoped their meeting at Orlandeaux’s that day would mark the start of a long-lasting partnership.

Dennis arrived early and discovered just one small problem: The historic soul-food restaurant was closed because there was a leak in the roof. He could place a takeout order, the staff told him, but he couldn’t sit down and eat.

So Dennis carefully explained his predicament to one of the restaurant managers.

“Wait, you’re trying to sign Mikaylah Williams?’ ” he asked.

Orlandeaux’s then opened back up, but only for Williams and her party. They moved some tables around and made it work. It looked like Dennis, Williams and her parents Patrick and LaTonya had the whole place rented out.

“We’re gonna do this for you,” Patrick Williams said, recalling the restaurant’s thinking, “because it’s you and because you’re from here and you represent us, and we’re proud of you.”

So yes, Williams was a big deal long before she enrolled at LSU. It’s easy to forget that she committed to the Tigers before Angel Reese appeared in her first game for them, so the fact that she chose LSU was one of the first major signs that Mulkey was bringing the program back into the national title picture.

All Williams has done since then is prove that she was worth the hype.

The bucket-getting extraordinaire dropped 42 points in just the fourth game she played at LSU, a November 2023 win over Kent State. As a sophomore and junior, she hit late-game daggers in consequential wins over Stanford, Oklahoma, Kentucky and Texas.

Williams also has upped her shooting percentages and assist average in every year of her career. Now she’s on track to jet off to the WNBA as one of LSU’s five all-time leading scorers.

“With her level of ability,” LSU associate coach Bob Starkey said, “she could have went out and shopped and made so much money it’d make your eyes spin, but she chose to stay here and finish her career. She loves Louisiana. She loves LSU, and there’s something special to be said about that.”

Staying in Baton Rouge allowed Williams to join the Iota Theta Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority — the first Black Greek Letter Organization that set up shop on the LSU campus. She’s a legacy because her grandmother, aunt and godmother are all Deltas. Williams officially followed in their footsteps at the start of her junior season.

You may have seen the clip of Williams quieting a crowd in the University High gym, removing her sunglasses, pantomiming a jump shot and — according to tradition — introducing herself by the alias that Black Greek Letter Organizations call a line name. Hers was “Smooth Operator.”

Mississippi State coach Sam Purcell gave Williams that nickname after she hung 22 points on his Bulldogs as a sophomore in February 2025, and an older Delta liked it enough to make it the moniker she adopted as part of her new member presentation.

Williams couldn’t really blend in. People first started recognizing her behind her shades and under her red beret when she and her line sisters were standing outside the gym, holding hands. The one in front of Williams, a senior named Camilla Wilkins-Bowens, felt the LSU star’s grip tighten once folks started “swarming” her.

“A lot of people knew who she was because of basketball,” Wilkins-Bowens said, “but now we actually get to know Mikaylah for who she is outside of basketball.

“We’re both the type of people who don’t really talk until we fully know the person, so we were kind of shy. Now, knowing her, that is the complete opposite of both of our personalities.”

Now there’s a good chance you’ll see a group of Deltas in the PMAC when LSU plays. They’ll be there to see Williams, the in-state star who kept returning to Baton Rouge because she has roots there. They run deep.

“You have to finish it,” Patrick Williams said. “The good people of the state of Louisiana have had her back, coming up and throughout her career, so it means something to her to be able to say, ‘I grew up in the state of Louisiana. I’m doing it for Louisiana State University.’

“Like, it means something.”

‘Understands the pressure’

Augustus didn’t meet Mikaylah Williams until she joined Mulkey’s coaching staff in 2024. Before then, to Augustus, Williams was just the LSU freshman from north Louisiana whom she had seen light up the LHSAA playoffs a couple of times.

Then Augustus met Williams face-to-face.

“I was like, ‘Oh,'” she said. “‘This is a baby me.’”

The most obvious comparison is the jump shot. Both Williams and Augustus are deadly from midrange. They’re about the same size, too, and they play largely the same position. Add those shared traits to the fact they’re both LSU stars from Louisiana, and you’ll see why Augustus likes to say that Williams reminds her of herself.

Starkey doesn’t exactly see it the same way. He thinks Williams and Augustus are “quite different,” in large part because Williams is “one of the most diverse players” he’s ever coached. She can score at all three levels. She can pass, defend and even play on the interior when the Tigers need her to. Augustus was more of a volume scorer.

Still, only Augustus really knows what it’s like to take on the challenge that Williams will try to tackle this season. It’s not every year that the player in charge of leading LSU to the Final Four is a sharpshooting guard from Louisiana.

“It’s a lot of pressure,” Augustus said. “What I’ve seen is a maturity level beyond most, where she understands the pressure and she embraces it, and most kids kind of falter in that embrace.”

Augustus has taken Williams under her wing. They don’t just go fishing together; they also sit down and watch film after games so Augustus can help Williams make the right reads, get to her spots and manipulate the defense. Williams said that Augustus has given her little tips and tricks — like how she can set screens or cut off the ball — so she can develop skills that can “get me in the WNBA and keep me there.”

When Williams gets to the league, she’ll also know how to maximize the money she makes, thanks to Augustus. The LSU assistant coach has helped her with her finances, offering investment advice that she can use both now and in the future.

Sometimes, Williams’ parents crash with Augustus’ parents for the weekend. No sense in driving from Bossier City to Baton Rouge for a Thursday game and then doing it again on Sunday. Not when there’s a couple in town who knows exactly what they — and their daughter — are going through.

“There’s ups and downs,” Patrick Williams said. “There’s good and bad days, but as long as she stays grounded and humble, and we’re there for her, that’s all that matters.”

Sometimes the fish just aren’t biting, but the best anglers sit quietly and wait patiently for a tug whether they’re catching anything or not. There’s peace in the chase, which is what Augustus showed Williams on her parents’ creek whether she realized it or not.

They didn’t even have to say a word.

“We really don’t have a lot to say,” Augustus said. “You ain’t trying to scare the fish off. You’re trying to be quiet on the creek.”