Former LSU women’s basketball standout Sylvia Fowles will return to campus to graduate Friday, according to an LSU Athletic Department news release.The former Olympic gold medalist, All-American, NCAA Defensive Player of the Year, Southeastern Conference Player of the Year, WNBA first-round draft pick and All-Rookie Team member, EuroLeague Center of the Year said the degree will be a crowning achievement on an already illustrious career.”This is at the top of the list,” she said in the release. “That’s the main thing we all strive for when we go to college.”The Chicago Sky drafted Fowles after she completed her NCAA eligibility with a 2008 Final Four run, but the Miami native remained two credits shy of graduation.”This is No. 1 at the top of my list because I am the youngest of my mother’s kids and I am the first to graduate,” she said. “It says a lot about how much my mother means to me and how she prepared me for this. I have a lot of nieces and nephews and they can look up to me and see if I can do it, they can too.”Erica White, Fowles’ former LSU teammate and now a member of the WNBA’s Indiana Fever, will also graduate Friday, as well as Kristen Morris, who completed her eligibility with the Lady Tigers this season.The three will all walk across the stage in the same building in which they made so many basketball memories together, the PMAC.”It hasn’t really hit me yet,” Fowles said. “I am looking forward to walking across that stage in the PMAC because I know that my mom will be there. I am flying my youngest brother out to see me. It will be a very emotional moment.”LSU associate head coach Bob Starkey said he’s looking forward to seeing Fowles finish her education — much like former men’s basketball standout Shaquille O’neal, another of Starkey’s former players, did in 2000.”It will be a proud moment for me to see Syl walk across the stage and receive her degree,” Starkey said in the release. “In a time where superstar athletes sometime move on without completing their degree work, both Sylvia and Shaquille have sent a strong message to young people on the importance of an education.”—-Contact The Daily Reveille sports staff at [email protected]