By Robert Wilson
Germantown High junior guard Madison Booker – the two-time Priority One Bank/Mississippi Scoreboard Metro Jackson Girls Basketball Player of the Year and 2021 Mississippi Gatorade Player of the Year – started, scored four points, and had a team-high nine rebounds to help the 2022 USA Basketball U17 Women’s Basketball Team to a 78-49 victory over Mali Saturday in the first round of the FIBA Women’s U17 World Cup in Hungary.
The 6-foot-1 rising senior made 2 of 5 shots from the field and had 6 defensive and 3 offensive rebounds and 2 assists in 17 minutes.
Team USA plays New Zealand in its second game Sunday at 12:30 Central on youtube.com/FIBA.
Booker was selected as one of 12 players to make national team after being one of 40 players at the trials in June at the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Trials participants and coaches were selected by the USA Basketball Women’s Development National Team Committee. Athletes represent the graduating classes of 2023 and 2024.
Booker is one of six players who were on last year’s 2021 USA Women’s U16 National Team which defeated Canada 118-45 for the Americas Championship. Booker started every game for the U16 National Team last summer.
Booker averaged 16.6 points, 7.6 rebounds, 2.3 assists and 2.1 steals and led Germantown to a 24-7 record and a second straight Girls State Tournament appearance as junior this past season despite facing all sorts of defenses trying to slow her down.
Booker, who is ranked No. 15 in the latest ESPNW Top 100 for the Class of 2023, narrowed her college choices down to nine schools – Mississippi State, South Carolina, Tennessee, Connecticut, Duke, Florida State, Louisville, Oregon, and Texas – on Sept. 18 last year. Booker – whose dad Carlos was a 6-foot-10 center for Southern Miss in the 1990s – has visited Duke and Tennessee.
She averaged 18.8 points, 7.8 rebounds, 2.7 assists, 1.6 steals and 1.6 blocked shots and led Germantown to a 13-4 record and the MHSAA Class 6A runner-up finish as a sophomore two years ago. She was first team on the All-Metro Jackson team for the past three seasons.
