Preseason All-American Madison Booker Named to Wade Watch List as Texas Opens Season

The last time Madison Booker walked off a college basketball court, it was after the toughest night of her career. On April 3 in Phoenix, Texas’ All-American forward went 3-of-23 from the field and scored a season-low six points. At one stretch she missed 17 straight shots, and the top-seeded Longhorns shot just 30.8 percent as a team in a physical, low-scoring national semifinal that ended their season one game short of the championship, 51-44 to UCLA.

Texas had made back-to-back Final Fours for the first time since the late 1980s, but both trips ended in the semifinals. The first was a 17-point loss to South Carolina in 2025, and the second was that grind-it-out defeat to the Bruins. That leaves the program, and its best player, still chasing the breakthrough that has come within reach two years in a row.

That chapter officially closes tonight. Booker and No. 6 Texas open the 2026-27 season at home against FDU, and for the first time in her college career she’ll take the floor without Rori Harmon, the program cornerstone whose Longhorns career ended in Phoenix. The senior from Ridgeland, Mississippi, comes into the season with the expectations that come with being one of the best players in the country.

The national recognition has already started. The Women’s Basketball Coaches Association named Booker to the 2026-27 Wade Watch List, which puts her in the running for one of the oldest and most prestigious player of the year awards in women’s college basketball. She was also one of five players named AP Preseason All-Americans. Both honors build on a résumé that already includes three First Team All-America selections and three Cheryl Miller Small Forward of the Year awards.

Booker’s numbers also put her in rare company in Austin. She enters her senior season fifth on Texas’ all-time scoring list with 1,969 points, so she’s 31 points from becoming only the fourth player in program history to reach 2,000. She has added 699 rebounds, 431 assists and 199 steals, and no other Longhorn has ever reached all of those totals. She shot better than 50 percent from the field last season and is a 47.8 percent shooter for her career, so the night in Phoenix stands out as the exception rather than the rule.

Two thousand points, a third straight Final Four and the national championship that has slipped away twice are all within reach this season, and the first step comes tonight against FDU. Her senior year is her chance to write a different ending than the one in Phoenix.