By Robert Wilson
Germantown 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 – is one of 40 players who will begin tryouts Thursday for the 2022 USA Basketball U17 National Team at the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
The 12-member team is expected be announced next Wednesday. The team will return to Colorado Springs June 25-30 before competing at the 2022 FIBA Women’s U17 World Cup July 9-17 in Hungry. Trials participants and coaches were selected by the USA Basketball Women’s Development National Team Committee. Athletes represent the graduating classes of 2023, 2024 and 2025.
Booker is one of 17 players in the Class of 2023 at the tryouts and one of 10 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.
“I’m so excited for Madison to have this opportunity to represent Mississippi girls basketball,” Germantown coach Jamie Glasgow said. “I know she will do great at the trials. She has been working hard to prepare for the trials and has experience from last year. Her Germantown family will be pulling for her and wishes her good luck. She always makes us proud.”
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.
