A coin toss went South Carolina’s way. Just about everything else is coming up Texas. Vic Schaefer’s Longhorns are among national title frontrunners.
Texas earned a share of SEC regular-season title in first year in the conference.
As SEC Tournament arrives, Texas remains in hot pursuit of what would be the program’s first national championship since 1986.
The coin on the back of Greg Sankey’s hand said South Carolina received the No. 1 seed in the SEC women’s basketball tournament, but the net around Vic Schaefer’s neck – cut down after the Longhorns’ 29th victory in 31 games – told a different story.
Schaefer’s Texas Longhorns are SEC champions, too.
And no coin flip would erase the smile from Taylor Jones’ face as she slid through burnt orange and white confetti on the court at Moody Center after No. 1 Texas smashed Florid 72-46 on Sunday to secure a share of the SEC’s regular-season title in the Longhorns’ first season in the conference.
“We worked hard to get to where we’re at now,” Jones said afterward, “and I don’t think that will stop, either way the coin landed.”
Texas and South Carolina tied atop the SEC standings with just a single conference loss. The teams played each other twice and split those games. So, a commissioner’s coin toss determined the No. 1 seed for this week’s SEC tournament.
WOMEN’S SPORTS: The latest news and insider insights from USA TODAY Studio IX.
The toss went South Carolina’s way. Just about everything else is coming up Longhorns.
Texas rides a 13-game win streak with a team built to contend for a national title. No clearcut front-runner exists for the national championship. Southern California, UCLA, South Carolina, Notre Dame and Connecticut join Texas among the favorites.
“I’m not trading my team for anybody,” Schaefer told me last week. “I love my team, I love my kids, and I’ve seen my kids do some really special things this year.”
This is the sort of team and season Schaefer envisioned when he accepted the Texas job in 2020.
Texas has long ranked as a strong program – it’s an NCAA women’s tournament regular – but it last won a national championship in 1986, when Jody Conradt’s team went 34-0.
Schaefer previously coached Mississippi State to two national runner-up finishes, and when he left that job for Texas, he declared that he was coming to make Texas great, not good.
Now, he works just a couple of blocks away from the address of a since-demolished hospital where he was born in Austin.
“I’m a Texas boy,” said Schaefer, who grew up in Houston and graduated from Texas A&M, “and, in my industry, I felt like the University of Texas was the best job in the country. I felt like coming here, this was a place where you could win multiple (conference) championships and have a chance to win a national championship.”
Texas shows versatility during climb to No. 1 in country
These Longhorns, who are ranked No. 1 in the USA TODAY Sports women’s basketball poll for the first time, win in a variety of ways.
Last week, they gutted out a 57-26 win against Georgia by limiting the Bulldogs to 30.6% shooting. Six days later, they received 32 points from their bench while dominating Florida in the paint.
Texas and UConn are the nation’s only teams that rank in the top 20 in both scoring offense and scoring defense.
They force bundles of turnovers that jumpstart their transition attack.
Madison Booker, one of the nation’s best players as a sophomore, teams up with Jones, a sixth-year senior, to provide Texas with a formidable frontcourt. Senior point guard Rori Harmon stirs the drink on offense and provides dogged defense.
Schaefer considers this the best shooting team of his career, but the Longhorns also defend the way their coach likes, helping them survive the occasional off shooting night.
“I believe in my team,” Schaefer said. “I’ve seen them fight for some gritty, gritty victories. They’ve shown me a level of toughness that I’m convinced on any given night, they can compete with anybody in the country.”
‘Job’s not done,’ as Longhorns enter SEC Tournament
Schaefer won a national championship as an associate coach at Texas A&M under Gary Blair, before he elevated Mississippi State to its best run of success in program history. His Bulldogs snapped UConn’s 111-game winning streak in the 2017 Final Four. Schaefer looks back fondly on his years coaching the Bulldogs and says no other job could have pulled him out of Starkville except for Texas.
Schaefer remembers a meeting with Texas’ other head coaches in 2022 after his team had reached the Elite Eight in his second season. As Schaefer scanned the room, he realized the coaches of 10 Texas teams either won the national championship or finished as the national runner-up during that athletic season.
“My team went to the Elite Eight, and we weren’t even good enough to finish in the top half of the room,” Schaefer said. “That’s how elite this place is. … The standard here is championships.”
This veteran-laden squad embraces that mentality. And even as the Longhorns soaked up a moment of enjoyment Sunday while they reflected on their regular-season achievements, Texas’ floor general made a declaration.
“The job’s not done,” Harmon said.
Blake Toppmeyer is a columnist for the USA TODAY Network. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer. Subscribe to read all of his columns.