Kobe Bryant, Rachel Banham: More on the meeting of the Mambas

Gophers star Rachel Banham is in Los Angeles for Friday's John R. Wooden Award ceremony, where she's a candidate for the top player in women's basketball this season. So it made sense for her on Wednesday night to be checking out the Lakers-Clippers game at Staples Center.

What happened next pretty much floored her, even thought it probably shouldn't have. She was standing by the court, wearing a Bryant jersey and watching the teams warm up.

She told Joey Ramirez of Lakers.com: "We made eye contact and he was like, 'Hey!' He was like, 'I gotta get you a jersey so you can come out and play. We kind of need you right now.'"

Their Twitter friendship dated back to February, when Bryant tweeted about Banham after she scored a Big Ten-record 60 points in Minnesota's double-overtime victory over Northwestern. He tweeted again when he saw news of her buzzer-beater, using the hashtag #mambablood.

"Oh, I was freaking out," Banham told Ramirez about the tweets. "I didn't think it was real. That's seriously the coolest thing that's ever happened to me."

Until Wednesday night, probably, when the two met and Bryant invited Banham to hang around after the game to meet his family. "When I hugged him, he said, 'Keep doing what you're doing and keep putting in work,' It's just so cool that someone like him believes in something that I can do."

Among those who were also thrilled was Gophers women's basketball coach Marlene Stollings, who tweeted the photo that's gone Minnesota viral in the last day or do.

You can read more about their meeting, and see the photo of Banham with Bryant and his family, by going here.