Top 44 LSU Athletes of the Decade: #43 Raigyne Moncrief-Louis

First off, I apologize for the delay. We’ve been meaning to do this for awhile, and we had all of the back end work of evaluating and ranking the players done. We just need to write these profiles.

So let this serve as a belated introduction to the Top 44 LSU Athletes of the decade. We chose #44 to honor Wayde Sims just as we chose the top 31 players of the last decade in honor of Wally Pontiff.

The rules of selection were malleable, but the general principle was this: we would honor at least one player from every program (which turned out to not be very hard), though we did treat some sports as one giant program, like cross-country as part of the track program.

The general criteria is that a player is judged relative to their sport, though there is some bonus for cultural cachet. Postseason performance also gives you a bump (which I will call the Carley Hoover Rule), and nearly every player on this list, save the basketball players due to the small teams, was named an All-American.

We did our best to honor every program and give everyone some time in the spotlight. The teams most hurt by this decision were the teams with larger rosters like football, baseball, and softball. We made some hard cuts there. Also, just from a standpoint of sheer awesomeness, gym probably had the most difficult cuts. I wouldn’t call them oversights, as we knew exactly who we were leaving off. Every cut hurt.

Without further ado…hope you enjoy the list.

Raigyne Moncrief-Louis suffered a back injury in high school. Due to the injury, her doctor recommended that he quit all contract sports, including basketball.

She said no. And thank goodness for that.

One year later, Moncrief-Louis was the top player in the state of Florida and a top 20 prospect in the nation. But after attending an LSU-Alabama football game, she saw the passion and energy of the Tiger faithful, and found herself a home in Baton Rouge.

She then went on to be one of the best players in LSU women’s hoops since the days of Fowles and Augustus. Moncrief-Louis’ name is all over the LSU career leaderboard. She ranks 9^th all-time in points (1,681), 3^rd in steals (298), 14^th in rebounds (726), and 13^th in assists (355).

She led the team in scoring in both 2014-15 and 2016-17. She also held the team lead in rebounds in both of those seasons, and additionally led the team in assists in both of those years plus 2017-18. She didn’t just lead the team in steals in 2016-17, she set the school season record.

Moncrief-Louis was a machine, and it’s not her fault that she didn’t get to play on the same kind of loaded teams as her predecessors. Heck, she even led the team in blocks in 2014-15, and that’s as a shooting guard. And it’s not like those teams stunk, she went to the NCAA tournament every year of her career.

She wasn’t just an offensive dynamo, Moncrief was simply one of the best defensive players in LSU history, earning the SEC Defensive Player of the Year Award in 2017.

Raigyne Moncrief married LSU linebacker Lamar Louis and ended her LSU career by getting drafted by the Las Vegas Aces of the WNBA.

She is one of the greatest players in LSU basketball history.