LSU is pulling out all the stops when it comes to recruiting Aneesah Morrow.

After landing Louisville transfer Hailey Van Lith in a blockbuster move, the reigning national champions hosted Morrow for an official visit last weekend. During that visit, they decked out her hotel room with snacks, confetti and fake dollar bills with Morrow’s photo on them — plus edited photos of the DePaul transfer decked out in purple-and-gold Tigers gear.

@_neesthabeast Official visit 🥳#lsu #24 #fypシ #wbb #viral #fyp ♬ Ice Cream Man X Walk It Talk It (Remix) - Keenan Anshari

LSU also used block letters to spell out her last name in true Baton Rouge fashion, writing “Morreaux” on the window in reference to the school’s “Geaux Tigers” catchphrase.

One of the top players in the country last season, the 20-year-old forward finished as the NCAA’s fourth-leading scorer with 25.7 points per game.

LSU is one of three schools on Morrow’s shortlist, along with USC and South Carolina. She already has visited USC, and she had an official visit to South Carolina planned for the end of this week, ESPN’s Alexa Philippou reported.

A decision could be imminent. “TODAY IS THE DAY,” Morrow tweeted Friday morning, fueling speculation about her next destination.

Juju Watkins is the Gatorade National Girls’ Basketball Player of the Year.

The USC commit, who also won this year’s Naismith High School Player of the Year award, received with the Gatorade award Monday during a photoshoot. WNBA star Candace Parker presented the Sierra Canyon high school senior with the award.

“This is one of the most prestigious awards you can get,” Watkins told The Athletic. “Just to get it and end it off the right way is really special for me. And it just gives me a lot of motivation going into next year at USC.”

As a senior, Watkins led her California high school to a 31-1 record, averaging 27.5 points, 13.7 rebounds, 3.6 assists, 2.5 steals and 1.7 blocks per game. Last summer, she earned MVP while helping the U-17 U.S. women’s national team to a FIBA World Cup championship.

“Although we already had a legacy and winning culture at Sierra Canyon, Juju took this program to a different level,” Sierra Canyon coach Alicia Komaki told ESPN. “She propelled us to win at the absolute highest level of competition. She took everyone’s best shot and delivered night after night.

“She made our program better… She made her teammates better. She made me a better coach. I truly believe she is one of the best to ever play high school basketball and her legacy will not just be about statistics and championships but how she handled being a superstar.”

As Watkins begins her college career next season with the Trojans, she has her sights set on one thing.

“I hope to add some hardware, some championships,” she said. “Just bringing USC back to what it was.”

USC won NCAA women’s basketball titles in 1983 and 1984 but has made just four March Madness appearances since 2000, including this year.

“Juju had the courage to stay home and is driven to bring USC women’s basketball back to prominence. What a monumental day for all of us in the Trojan family,” USC coach Lindsay Gottlieb said when Watkins announced her commitment to the Trojans in November.

USC commit Juju Watkins headlines the trio of three finalists for the Gatorade National Girls’ Basketball Player of the Year award.

Hannah Hidalgo, a Notre Dame commit out of Paul VI (New Jersey), and Jadyn Donovan, a Duke recruit out of Sidwell Friends (Washington, D.C.), round out the group of finalists.

For California native Watkins, the award comes after a rollercoaster week. The Sierra Canyon guard and her team lost in the state regional final on Tuesday night, ending their quest for a perfect season and a state championship. But on Friday, she was named the Naismith Girls’ High School Player of the Year.

The rising star grew up just 10 minutes from the USC campus, and she’ll stay close to home as she continues her basketball career. She announced her commitment to USC in November in front of fiends and classmates at Sierra Canyon.

“Juju is the best and most decorated player of her class both in the country and internationally, ” USC coach Lindsay Gottlieb said in a press release at the time. “I could talk for days about her skill set: her shot-making ability, creativity to the rim, dominance on the boards, defensive tenacity and her elite court vision.”

The 6-foot-1 guard led Sierra Canyon to a state title in her junior season with 24.8 points, 10.3 rebounds, 3.2 assists, 2.8 steals and 2.0 blocks per game.

McDonald’s All-American Aaliyah Gayles, who was shot 10 times at a North Las Vegas house party, has signed a national letter of intent to USC, the school said Monday.

The basketball recruit from Spring Valley High School in Las Vegas was released from the hospital Saturday after undergoing a series of surgeries to treat injuries sustained in the shooting.

Gayles reportedly was one of four people shot at the April 16 gathering, with no arrests yet made.

Gayles, who averaged 13.8 points, 4.9 rebounds, 3.5 steals and 3.3 assists last season, is the No. 8 recruit in the 2022 class according to ESPN.

“Aaliyah is one of the most talented, athletically gifted basketball players I’ve known. She is electric on the court, with her ability to score, defend and create for others with her ball-handling and vision,” USC head coach Lindsay Gottlieb said in a statement. “But from the moment I got to know her, I was also drawn to her character. Her humility, loyalty, warm personality and resilience set her apart, along with her athletic gifts.”

Just before being released from the hospital to a physical therapy facility, Gayles told FOX5 Vegas that her “body is feeling alright but it hurts still.”

After providing the local media outlet with an update on her condition, Gayles was sure to thank everyone who lent their love and support.

“First thing I told everybody is don’t cry — cause I didn’t. But I’m feeling — emotionally I’m feeling good. I’m just ready to get back on the court,” Gayles said.

First, there was shock.

Just hours earlier, they had all been together in Chicago, at the Jordan Brand Classic game, a showcase for the top 26 basketball players in the class of 2022. At the center of it all, as is often the case at these gatherings among the nation’s elite, was Aaliyah Gayles, the Spring Valley High School (Nevada) point guard, USC commit and owner of the group’s most contagious smile.

Then came fear.

The news spread on social media: Gayles had been shot at a house party in Las Vegas. Her condition was unclear. The four- and five-star recruits bounced into each others’ Instagram DMs, frantically trading what little information they had. It was Sunday night.

“When you see multiple gunshot wounds, you don’t know,” Sidwell Friends (D.C.) point guard Kiki Rice said. “You assume it’s bad.”

“It just broke my heart,” Homestead (Fort Wayne, Ind.) wing Ayanna Patterson said.

“This can’t be real. Not Aaliyah, not Aaliyah,” Hopkins (Minnetonka, Minn.) forward Maya Nnaji said she thought.

Finally, as the school week progressed, there came some relief.

Gayles had been shot 10 times, including eight times in the legs and ankles, but her injuries were not life-threatening. She underwent three surgeries and is expected to make a “full recovery.” Doctors were hopeful Gayles would be able to learn how to walk again from rehabilitation.

Her basketball future, however, is less certain.

What happened to Gayles at a Las Vegas house party on Saturday night will take time to process, for Gayles, her family and her loved ones. Among those impacted are the girls from across the country who’ve gotten to know the springy guard over the years, who’ve been her direct competitors for awards, rankings and scholarship offers.

Instead of enemies, they’ve become friends, forming a basketball sisterhood whose bond was strengthened at the Jordan game and the McDonald’s All-American Game, also in Chicago, on March 29. Gayles, with her flashy handles and flashier dance moves, had become the group’s purveyor of joy, on and off the court.

So, for the girls who’ve come to know Gayles, the past week was a rollercoaster of emotions: Shock. Fear. Relief. And something else less quantifiable, but just as visceral.

“It makes me want to go out there and compete even harder,” Nnaji said, “for her.”

***

The moment that best encapsulates Gayles, her friends said, came on March 28, the evening before the McDonald’s game. The 24 girls had just been awarded their All-American rings, and were being called to load back on the bus for the hotel.

Gayles had another idea.

She saw a DJ and a dance floor. It was time, she decided, to dance.

“She was dancing so hard,” Nnaji said. “She was going crazy!”

With her “West Coast flavor,” as Patterson put it, Gayles urged the rest of the girls to join her on the floor. Soon she and Janiah Barker, the 6-foot-2 forward from Montverde (Fla.) committed to Texas A&M, were sweating through their white T-shirts, and Iman Shumpert, the NBA shooting guard from 2011-21, was dancing by their side.

Rice, winner of the JWS Player of the Year award and several other national honors, is the most celebrated name in the class. But Rice, who does not identify as a “good dancer,” was not too proud to admit she could learn something from Gayles.

“We were joking about how she needed to teach me how to dance,” Rice said.

Rice first met Gayles, she said, in eighth grade, at the Blue Star 30 camp in Las Vegas. Same with Patterson, who recalled that Gayles took control of an impromptu dance circle at the camp despite being among the youngest players in attendance.

“She wants everyone to feel as happy as she is,” Nnaji said. “She’s always trying to get other people to smile.”

That also applies to the court, where Gayles has built a reputation among her peers for her ankle-breaking handles and calls for the crowd to make noise. In a practice ahead of the McDonald’s game, she successfully threw a between-the-legs lob to Patterson. The same behavior from a lesser-liked player might evoke bitterness, but not Gayles, who averaged 13.8 points, 4.9 rebounds, 3.5 steals and 3.3 assists for Spring Valley this past season.

On Monday night, a local parent set up a GoFundMe page to help Gayles’ family pay for medical expenses. Several of the players Gayles has met on the national scene from the class of 2022, Patterson said, donated $22 each as an act of solidarity.

Gayles will probably spend about two months in a wheelchair, former Spring Valley coach Billy Hemberger (he left to take the head job at Liberty this month) told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. But Gayles was in good spirits, he said.

Still, questions remain about her future, as well as what happened Saturday night. Her father, Dwight, wrote in a since-deleted tweet that Gayles normally doesn’t attend house parties.

“For the record my kid hates house parties,” he wrote. “Anybody that knows her knows that. She was simply returning a favor to a friend that came to her birthday party and within (minutes) of being there this happened.”

It’s all still a little difficult for Rice, a UCLA signee, to wrap her head around. Will she ever get to play against Gayles in Pac-12 rivalry games, as they had talked about?

Rice, Gayles and a few other girls rode on the same bus to the airport Saturday morning. Gayles told Rice she was going to head straight to the gym from the airport. She didn’t hear about a party.

The next day, it was Rice who told Patterson what had happened. Patterson, who is bound for UConn, did not have a workout scheduled for Monday, but after school she hopped in her car and drove 30 minutes to her father’s facility, the McMillan Park Community Center in Fort Wayne.

Patterson threw up shot after shot, seemingly alone. Though the ball was flying off Patterson’s fingertips, she felt like someone else was taking the shots.

“This,” Patterson said, “is her moment.”

Josh Needelman is the High School Sports Editor at Just Women’s Sports. Follow him on Twitter @JoshNeedelman.

USC women’s basketball commit Aaliyah Gayles was conscious Monday following emergency surgeries to treat gunshot wounds she sustained at a house party in North Las Vegas late Saturday, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

The McDonald’s All-American was shot 10 times, according to the Review-Journal, including eight times in the legs and ankles.

Her father Dwight Gayles said Tuesday on Twitter that she had undergone a third surgery that “went very well.”

“We expect a full recovery,” he wrote. “Thank you everyone for your support.”

WNBA legend Sheryl Swoopes was one of many to send support, tweeting that she is “lifting Aaliyah Gayles up in prayer!”

Aces All-Star Dearica Hamby, who has the same trainer as Gayles, tweeted a link to a fundraiser that has been set up to support the high school senior’s recovery. As of noon Tuesday, the fundraiser already has surpassed $13,000.

“Vegas is kind of a basketball community, so just showing support during a tragic situation. Just doing what I can,” Hamby told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “We’re thankful that she’s alive. We’re here for her.”

Both she and teammate Kelsey Plum have donated to the fundraiser, and A’ja Wilson said that she intends to do so as well.

“I know times are tough right now, but she’s always in our prayers,” Wilson said. “The Aces are behind her 100 percent. … Right now, she just needs support and prayer. I know she’s a warrior. I know she’s going to fight through it.”

High school basketball star and USC commit Aaliyah Gayles has been hospitalized after being shot multiple times late Saturday in North Las Vegas, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

Gayles, 18, who recently played in the McDonald’s All-American game and is a JWS second-team All-American, was one of four people to suffer gunshot wounds after a fight broke out at a house party, according to North Las Vegas police.

The four people were hospitalized with survivable gunshot wounds, the Review-Journal reported, though one woman was listed in “serious” condition with wounds to her lower body.

Gayles underwent two emergency surgeries Sunday morning, sources told the Review-Journal.

Gayles’ father Dwight tweeted an update on his daughter’s condition Sunday night.

“I know there is some that will say it’s my fault and I take full responsibility for it but please please keep my baby girl in your prayers Las Vegas,” he wrote. “I will give everyone that support Aaliyah an update but she’s ok she go make it like always thank you all, true warrior.”

The No. 8-ranked recruit per ESPN, Gayles averaged 13.8 points, 4.9 rebounds, 3.5 steals and 3.3 assists per game for Las Vegas’ Spring Valley High School. In August, she committed to USC under head coach Lindsay Gottlieb after previously decommitting from the school following the retirement of former coach Mark Trakh.

“Aaliyah is one of the strongest, most resilient young people I have ever known,” Gottlieb said in a statement to ESPN on Sunday night. “I have no doubt she will continue to face this unfathomable situation with courage and resolve. We will continue to support her and her parents in every way that we possibly can.”

Gayles had been in Chicago on Friday, playing in the Jordan Brand Classic.