Shakeia Taylor: For Sky fans, tomorrow is here with draft picks Kamilla Cardoso and Angel Reese

CHICAGO — In this year’s SEC tournament championship game, South Carolina center Kamilla Cardoso and LSU forward Angel Reese battled it out in the paint. Two of the game’s biggest stars, they have a history of fierce, physical competition dating to high school.

On Monday night, as the Nos. 3 and 7 picks in a historic WNBA draft class, Cardoso and Reese became the Chicago Sky’s frontcourt of the future.

Nancy Thompson, a Chicago native and Sky fan since the team’s inception in 2006, said she couldn’t sleep and couldn’t work the night before the draft. A three-year season ticket holder, Thompson talked about having been with the team through tough years and wanting the feeling from the 2021 title season back.

She was hopeful, wearing a South Carolina cap and an aura of enthusiasm so strong you could almost touch it.

“We’ve got three picks in the top 15,” she said. “I’m wearing this hat for a reason. I’m excited.”

At the team’s draft party at Revolution Brewing, Thompson, former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and about 250 other fans and members of the team’s front office gathered to watch as Sky general manager Jeff Pagliocca and coach Teresa Weatherspoon got the players they wanted most. When the picks were announced, the taproom erupted. Thompson screamed and ran in a circle while recording the scene with her phone.

It was a new day in Skytown.

The Sky, who went 18-22 last season, entered the offseason with many questions and no draft capital. But Pagliocca made moves, trading three-time All-Star Kahleah Copper and Morgan Bertsch to the Phoenix Mercury for the pick that eventually landed Cardoso. And in a move that sent a message about what the team planned to do with its second first-round pick, he moved up one spot from No. 8 to No. 7 on Sunday in a trade with the Minnesota Lynx.

It was an aggressive move for a team that needed to make a splash. This was the kind of draft that could shift the direction of a franchise — and everything came up Chicago.

“We had a need to add somebody that size,” Pagliocca said of Cardoso. “But on top of her being 6-7, she’s a great athlete. She can run the court, she can outrun wings, bigs. She’s just scratching the surface of where she’ll become as a player.

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