BIRMINGHAM—Fittingly for a team from a barbecue mecca, the Texas Longhorns thrive on slow cooking. Their Elite Eight win over the TCU Horned Frogs was a master class in how to control the heat. The Longhorns led by four points after one quarter, two at the half and six with 2:42 remaining, but they dominated the entire game. There was not even one three-minute stretch when TCU looked like the better team.
“I want to give credit to Texas for playing a phenomenal game,” TCU coach Mark Campbell said. “They made us uncomfortable and kept us out of rhythm, really, for the whole game.”
Texas now moves on to Tampa for the fifth round of the NCAA tournament and fourth round of its season series with fellow SEC power, the South Carolina Gamecocks. The Gamecocks beat the Longhorns by 17 and 19, though both of those games were in South Carolina: One in Columbia, and one in the SEC tournament final in Greenville. Texas beat South Carolina by four in Austin.
The Gamecocks will be favored, as they should be. But Texas belongs on the floor against anybody. The Longhorns have one superstar, Madison Booker, and plenty of talent around her, but their most impressive quality might be that they play mature basketball.
Their 58–47 defeat of TCU was another example of it. Texas coach Vic Schaefer said “a combination of a lot of things … had to happen for us to have a chance to win,” but his players did almost all of them, especially the most important one of all.
“The defense never wavered,” Schaefer said. “It was never, ever a problem. Nobody’s standing out there in a 2-3 zone playing hope-you-miss defense.”
It was obvious from the start that this was a bad matchup for TCU. Texas had the athletes to harass Horned Frogs point guard Hailey Van Lith, and the size to neutralize TCU center Sedona Prince and get her into foul trouble. Prince scored four points before fouling out. The most memorable play of the game came when Texas’s 6′ 6″ Kyla Oldacre dribbled down court on a fast break, drew a foul from Prince, and scored. The 6′ 7″ Prince tumbled to the floor. Oldacre hit the free throw.
The Horned Frogs finished with 12 made baskets, 33 misses and 21 turnovers. Of those 21 turnovers, only nine came on steals—which weirdly, is a testament to how good Texas’s defense was. The Longhorns pressed for most of the game, but they did so with incredible discipline. TCU just had nowhere to go. For 40 minutes.
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Rori Harmon, who forced Van Lith into a 3-for-15 finale to her college career, said, “With a good basketball player and ballhandler like she is, I can’t gamble on dribbles and [hesitations].” Instead, she stayed in front of Van Lith and made her give up the ball to a less dynamic teammate.
Booker scored 18 points and didn’t even shoot particularly well.
“Sometimes when the ball isn’t going in, you can go one of two ways,” Schaefer said. “That’s why she is as special as she is. She can put it to the side.”
The only reason the score was as close as it was is that Texas does not shoot three-pointers. The Longhorns took only three all night. (They made two.) Avoiding threes is analytically unsound, and we don’t recommend you try it at home, but it works for this Texas team. It also requires a high level of discipline and trust: The Longhorns don’t hunt threes and therefore don’t really seek blowouts. They just methodically dismantle almost everyone they play.
And as Schaefer said, “When we had to have some good offense, they came up with it.”
The best college teams tend to be an embodiment of their coach, and Texas is Schaefer. He is an unapologetic workaholic who still sleeps in his office sometimes. “If you had a camera following him around, a day in the life of Vic Schaefer, you’d be at the gym all day,” Booker said. “You’d be in the office watching film all day.”
The Longhorns have lost three games all season. One was to the Notre Dame Fighting Irish when the Irish were rolling. The other two losses were to the team they will face Friday. South Carolina has all the glamour, talent and coaching acumen that a program could want. Texas counters with talent and coaching acumen. The Longhorns will be ready. They always are.
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