The first lady, Jill Biden, is facing blowback from members of the women’s NCAA basketball champions, Louisiana State University, who are bristling over her suggestion that the defeated University of Iowa join them at the traditional White House celebration.

When the Tigers upset the Hawkeyes on Sunday, Mrs. Biden was in a box enjoying the action; her foul occurred the next day at Denver. After inviting LSU to the White House, she said, “I’m going to tell Joe I think Iowa should come, too, because they played such a good game.”

LSU took this not as an example of graciousness that befits a first lady but as being forced to share the spotlight. So, Mrs. Biden’s press secretary, Vanessa Valdivia, performed one of the administration’s famous walk backs.

This consists of dribbling and looking at the basket while walking backward toward your own hoop. Ms. Valdivia tweeted that the first lady “loved watching” the game and praised “how far women have advanced in sports since the passing of Title IX.” Next, she got to work on the cleanup in aisle 1600.

“Her comments in Colorado,” she said of Mrs. Biden, “were intended to applaud the historic game and all women athletes. She looks forward to celebrating the LSU Tigers on their championship win at the White House.”

President Biden congratulated both the Tigers and their male counterpart champions, the University of Connecticut Huskies. “I look forward to welcoming them at each of their White House visits,” he said, and the Hawkeyes accepted having the door closed on their beaks.

However, the star shooting guard for LSU, Angel Reese, objected. “It bothers me,” she said of Mrs. Biden on the I Am Athlete podcast, “because you’re a woman, at the end of the day, and you’re supposed to be standing behind us before anything.” Never mind that all the players are women.

These remarks illustrate just how deep the tendrils of identity politics have burrowed into many young people, who see a first lady not as her husband’s representative, but a minion in the sports equivalent of Secretary Clinton’s “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuits.”

Was the relationship strained even before the tipoff? According to Ms. Reese, the Tigers rejected Mrs. Biden’s offer to visit their locker room, saying that Mr. Biden “picked somebody else to win the national championship. He didn’t even put us on his bracket to get out of Baton Rouge.”

Iowa “can have that spotlight,” Ms. Reese said. “We’ll go to the Obamas” — an idea suggested by her teammate, Alexis Morris. “I’m gonna see Michelle. I’m gonna see Barack.” A threat to visit President Trump would have stung more, but in the pop culture playoffs, Republicans don’t make the cut.

Ms. Reese quoted Mrs. Biden’s “comment about both teams should be invited because of sportsmanship.” Taking it as a reference to her taunting of Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, she wondered if the first lady made the dual invite because of that incident.

“Stuff like that,” Ms. Reese said, “bothers” her because it fails to support her team. She and many sports pages inferred that an apology had been offered for this perceived slight. “I don’t accept the apology,” she said. “You said what you said. … You can’t go back on certain things that you say.”

So much for equality if we are to hold Mrs. Biden, in a ceremonial position, to a higher standard than her elected husband, who has been allowed to rewrite statements such as insisting the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, “cannot remain in power.”

The press tried throwing a few elbows, too, noting that the Tigers are majority black and Iowa white — subdivisions of women into yet smaller groups to be rated in the victimhood standings.

Mrs. Biden, whom the Sun dubbed “Doctor of Diplomacy” after her visit to Ukraine last May, hit the rim with this shot. She tried to be generous, only to feel the sting of the maxim, “No good deed goes unpunished.”

A more important lesson is yet to be learned by the Tigers. Had they accepted Mrs. Biden’s political happy talk, the focus would be on their championship. Instead, they’re stealing the spotlight from their great achievement in a way Iowa couldn’t manage to do on the court.