Texas plays UCLA in the women’s Final Four Friday night. The other two teams still vying for a spot in the big game are UConn and South Carolina.
“If you’re just picking up on women’s college basketball, this is the perfect time to do it because you got the four best teams playing each other,” Houston Chronicle sports reporter Matt Young said.
Young thinks UT has a pretty good shot against UCLA based on a matchup earlier in the year.
“The Longhorns won by about 12 points, were up big at halftime, and kind of cruised to the win,” Young said. “UCLA hasn’t lost since that game, so it should be still a tough game, but I think Texas can win that one.”
He says the real challenge will be if the Longhorns make it to the championship and have to play either UConn or South Carolina.
“Those are two really tough teams,” he said.
For a team headed to the Final Four, The University of Texas at Austin women haven’t exactly been living on the edge. These games have been more like blowouts than nail-biters – but that’s created some space for something else to take over.
Two players in very different ways have become a big part of why this UT women’s basketball run has been so much fun to watch.
The undeniable one
Madison Booker might be what you call the star, the scorer, the centerpiece.
Young says Texas has a lot of good players, but Booker is one of the best players in the country.
“Probably going to be a top three or four in WNBA draft pick when she’s ready to go pro,” Young said.
Booker came from Mississippi but decided to go to Texas like her idol Kevin Durant. She even wears the same number that Durant wore while at UT. Young says her game is also a lot like the current Houston Rockets star.
“Just an incredible shooter. She’s big for her position so people have trouble guarding her and she’s just kind of instant offense for the team,” Young said. “The time that she’s on the court, she’s pretty devastating on offense.”
Durant and Booker have now built a friendship.
“Because Kevin Durant keeps up with Texas analytics a lot. And Kevin Durant has his own shoe brand with Nike. And so he even struck a deal with Madison where she wears his sneakers. And so after the Rockets games, he’s been kind of mentioning frequently, ‘hey, did you see Madison? Did you see her sneakers? You see how she scored?’ and all this so I think they keep in touch,” Young said. “And Madison Booker has said, you know, what a crazy time it is for her for a player that she grew up watching as a kid, and now he can just text her, she can text him, and they kind of share insight into the game.”
The likable unlikely one
And then there’s UT’s Sarah Graves – minimal minutes, maximum reaction.
“Yeah, she’s kind of become a fan favorite, which isn’t all that unusual for maybe the last player off the bench to become embraced by the fans, but she’s also really embraced by the team. Her teammates love her,” Young said.
Graves was a standout player at Keller High School and while Youngs said she could have been a star at a smaller school, she really wanted to go to the University of Texas.
“She walked on, didn’t have a scholarship and coaches liked her so much that they gave her a scholarship after one year,” Young said. “She only played one single minute her entire freshman year and she still did enough to convince coaches she was worth the scholarship.”
As Texas has been blowing teams out in the tournament, Graves has been playing in the final minutes and helping to rack up the score.
“[She’s] hitting three pointers and she does fun celebrations on the way down the court. Her team goes crazy on the bench, the fans go nuts, it’s all fun for Texas,” Young said.
Young says he’s covered a lot of teams and sometimes notices adverse reactions from teammates when one player is getting outsized attention – but he says that’s not been the case at Texas.
“They all love her,” Young said. “They all say the right things after games, how excited they are for Sarah. And she’s really, it’s rare that she plays so little but she’s really one of the team leaders.”
