The junior from\u00a0Ridgeland, Miss., has burst onto the scene as one of the Longhorns’ most reliable scorers with her midrange jumpshot. But she’s struggled through the first half of the Final Four, making just one field goal. But there’s still time left for her to make an imprint in the national semifinal Friday.<\/p>\n
Here are three things to know about Booker:<\/p>\n
There’s a reason why Booker wears No. 35: it’s the same jersey number as her favorite player: former\u00a0Texas men’s basketball<\/a> star\u00a0Kevin Durant<\/a>. The Houston Rockets All-Star was an All-American in his lone season as a Longhorn; he’s one of three UT men’s basketball players with their number retired.<\/p>\n “She’s gonna have that thing retired on the other side,” Durant said in 2024 when asked about how well Booker represents the number.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n Like most of her teammates, Booker was busy working on her game over the summer. But her work came overseas in Chile as a member of the\u00a0FIBA Women\u2019s AmeriCup tournament<\/a>. One of 12 players selected, Booker started in the gold medal game<\/a>, which the USA won 92-84 over Brazil. She averaged 7.1 points over the course of the tournament; highlights include 12 points in the semifinals against Canada and 13 points and six steals in a quarterfinal win over the Dominican Republic.\u00a0<\/p>\n She also appeared on gold-medal winning rosters for FIBA U17 Women\u2019s World Cup, 2021 U16 Americas Championship and U19 World Cup.\u00a0<\/p>\n Booker is the only Texas player to be named a three-time All-American. She’s been the SEC player of the year and Big 12 player of the year, which she won as a freshman. She’s a finalist for the Wooden Award, which goes to the nation’s best player. But the accolades have been raining in for years.<\/p>\n A graduate of Gremantown High School, she was named an all-state honoree three times, according to her UT bio<\/a>. During her junior year in the 2021-22 season, she averaged 16.6 points and 7.6 rebounds. Booker was the No. 12-ranked prospect in her class. In 2023 she was a McDonald\u2019s All-American and Naismith High School All-American. When she signed with Texas<\/a>, Booker became the 27th\u00a0 player Longhorn in program history to play in the All-American game. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The junior from\u00a0Ridgeland, Miss., has burst onto the scene as one of the Longhorns’ most reliable scorers with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234640,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5278,48876,81012,83229,74833,65583,27,29,537,5276,28,13548],"class_list":{"0":"post-234639","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-madison-booker","9":"tag-march-madness","10":"tag-march-madness-tournament","11":"tag-ncaa-march-madness-tournament","12":"tag-ncaa-women-s-basketball-tournament","13":"tag-team-usa","14":"tag-texas","15":"tag-texas-headlines","16":"tag-texas-longhorns","17":"tag-texas-longhorns-women-s-basketball","18":"tag-texas-news","19":"tag-women-s-college-basketball"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}