Madison Booker is a perfectly polite and charismatic young woman, but there is no athlete in her sport for whom the word “rude” often comes to mind. Rudeness in basketball has two characteristics. He’s good enough to make a difficult game look easy, but even better than that, he’s good enough to make his opponent’s efforts seem like a waste. I’m strutting into the department store, knocking over a pile of neatly folded sweaters, and heading home. The feeling you get when you see a defender stay in front of Booker, get up, and land a mid-range jumper over their head is overwhelming sadness.
In any case, if Texas has any chance of being a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, they’ll need to lead them to an SEC Tournament championship booker last weekend and force the Longhorns to claim the third overall seed in the Fort Worth region, not far from home. In three tournament games (quarterfinals against Alabama, semifinals against Ole Miss and Sunday’s final against South Carolina), the junior Booker averaged 20 points, 8.3 rebounds, shot 61.4% from the field and earned tournament MVP honors in very unceremonious fashion.
Most coaches will tell you that they’re happy if their team gets the opposing team’s star player to make a lot of mid-range attempts. But Booker measures “difficulty” a little differently. If you give her enough space to take pictures and she doesn’t need much, you’ll end up wearing a lot of hats. It’s one of those skills that makes her basically unguardable. Strong on his feet and standing at 6-foot-1, Booker enjoys a physical advantage over most defenders on all three teams. Her experience at point guard, where she spent some time as a freshman after teammate Rori Harmon tore her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), means she can create even when opponents have some size to her. She also reveals some of that rudeness through rebounding. There’s nothing more disrespectful than a decisive defensive rebound (Enough of your nonsense!) or soul-crushing attack board (you idiot, you thought You win!).
“I remember when we played that game at my house,” Ole Miss coach Yolett McPhee-McKuin said after Booker scored 31 points against his team in Saturday’s semifinal, recalling Texas’ comeback against the Booker-led Rebels last year. “We beat them, and she missed a shot and followed it up and got the rebound and scored. She has a knack for making plays like that.”
It’s not uncommon for skilled, physical freshmen to burst onto the scene and then slump for the rest of their time on campus, but Booker continues to get better. After two seasons of below-average effective field goal percentages, she ranked in the 74th percentile this season, shooting better than 55% in two of those seasons. And just in time: The Longhorns have fallen short as a contender over the past few years and will always come under scrutiny for their lack of 3-point attempts, but this team looks like Vic Schaefer’s best and most balanced group in Texas yet. “I don’t think there will ever be a moment when something too big will happen to these kids,” he said on Sunday. Among the other likely No. 1 seeds, Texas has already beaten UCLA this season despite the Thanksgiving tournament being so early in the season. UConn, expected to be the first overall seed, is a less familiar beast.
No team has experienced Booker’s rudeness more often than South Carolina, another likely No. 1 seed. South Carolina and Texas have played seven times over the past two seasons. “I’m sick of watching them,” Booker joked after a loss to the Gamecocks in January. Dawn Staley had nothing to add to her postgame remarks Sunday. “She played like Maddie Booker,” South Carolina’s coach said after the game and needed no further explanation. Staley’s Gamecocks, who have four wins in seven games, have had some success against Booker with long, fast defenders like Raven Johnson and Bree Hall who can deny the ball to Booker. But once she has it, there isn’t much left to do. Pray for some mercy, perhaps, but don’t expect any kindness.
