“She’s got good hands. She’s a shot blocker. She’s won a national championship. She’s got a story, which is pretty important to us. That type of stuff goes a long way. She’s sacrificed a ton.”

Pagliocca said the Sky were hoping Reese would be available at No. 7 and took the opportunity to get her.

“There’s wrenches that get thrown into these situations,” he said. “There were great players there and we got the one that we were looking for. She is an absolutely relentless competitor. She pursues the ball better than anybody I’ve ever seen. She’s a winner.

“She comes from another winning program, another great coach. A player that fits the narrative that our coach wants to play with: relentless energy, toughness, grit. We’re looking for people that are going to come in here and fight.”

In talking about the team’s top two picks, Pagliocca described what the Sky had been missing all last season: an identity. Cardoso and Reese, along with first-year coach Weatherspoon, bring a throwback defensive intensity that should help define the team and its culture.

“We have everything we need,” Weatherspoon added with a sure smile.

Without making any promises, Pagliocca and Weatherspoon made it clear winning is a priority. Cardoso, a two-time national champion at South Carolina, said she will bring her “winning leadership” and “winning mentality.”

“We have a winning coach and we have a winning culture here,” Pagliocca explained. “We’re not that far removed from a championship. We’ve had great records, we keep making the playoffs. We needed players that are going to come in and want to make winning plays.”

The turnaround from the NCAA Tournament to the WNBA draft to the regular season is swift. The Sky open the season May 15 on the road against the Dallas Wings. Their first home game against back-to-back No. 1 picks Caitlin Clark and Aliyah Boston and the Indiana Fever on June 23 is already marked on calendars of fans across the league.

Downstairs in the taproom, a full-fledged party environment had taken over. There were shouts of joy, hugs and predictions of which games would be marquee matchups throughout the season. There was an electric energy in the room. Conversations about when — not if — the team would be a contender again filled the air.

The excitement wasn’t just in Chicago either. The Sky social media team’s posts were getting 5,000 likes every five minutes across multiple platforms, and the team’s accounts had gained 10,000-plus followers within the first hour of the picks being announced.

In New York, where the draft took place, Reese was asked if there’s a quote she lives by. She quoted rapper GloRilla: “Every day the sun won’t shine, but that’s why I love tomorrow.”

“Every day is not going to be a great day,” Reese continued, “and a lot of times in my life, I felt like I was down but always look to the next day because I know something else greater was going to happen.”

For Sky fans, tomorrow is here.

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