Lauren Ebo is now in Catalonia, playing for Joventut Badalona in Spain’s Liga Femenina de Baloncesto and moving closer and closer westwards as a pro, after starting off in Turkey and later playing in Poland. If England doesn’t get in the way, we might see her back in the United States next.
Regardless of where she plays, Ebo is a double-double machine. Hailing from Washington, D.C., she played two college seasons at Penn State, two at Texas and a final season at Notre Dame, and she was the center
for the Nigerian National Team at the 2024 Olympics, as her dad is Nigerian.
She recently talked to Swish Appeal about her career, her teammates and all the double-doubles.
On attending Sonia Citron’s 2025 WNBA Draft night:
At Notre Dame, we’re family. That was the closest I’ve ever been to a team. And I feel like I’ll forever be locked in with that group of girls because we were so close. And I don’t know if it’s because of what we went through but we’re extremely close. Obviously, we don’t live in New York, so going all the way to New York does say a lot. But Soni, she’s a great teammate. She’s a solid teammate. You can always depend on her, always count on her. And yeah, I think it was important for us to go show our support. And despite us not being able to spend that much one-on-one time with her, because obviously she’s caught up with all the draft stuff, it was so good for us to see her and for her to see us, to know that, we were always going to be there for her and whatnot.
On playing for the Nigerian National Team at the 2024 Olympics:
It was a great experience. It was really surreal at the village in Lille because you were just surrounded by all the basketball players and being able to go to breakfast and see [Nikola] Jokić or see Jamal Murray sitting across from you. People dream of these experiences to be face to face with these great players, and even on the women’s side. But yeah, it got to a point where it’s like, okay, we see each other every day. So it was really nice being able to get out of the group stage and make it to Paris, which was a different experience. It was really cool being surrounded by other athletes from different sports. And obviously, the Paris Village actually had hair salons and gyms and different food courts and things like that. And I didn’t fully process what I went through until a couple of months after, when I was able to look at pictures and realize what I just went through.
Thank you to William Clay of Diamond in the Rough Sports Management for arranging the interview.
