Texas coach Vic Schaefer has come agonizingly close to winning a national championship.
Close as in three previous trips to the Final Four. And two title game appearances, including one lost on a last-second 3-pointer.
The 65-year-old Schaefer is close again. Only he’s over being close in March Madness. He wants to win one. And the Longhorns just may have the team to do it this year.
Texas returns to the Final Four for the second consecutive year behind dominant three-time All-American forward Madison Booker and dynamic fifth-year point guard Rori Harmon. The Longhorns are chasing the program’s first national championship since 1986, when Texas and Hall of Fame coach Jody Conradt barnstormed through a 34-0 season to become the first undefeated title winners.
And for Schaefer, it’s a chance to exorcise some “close” ghosts from the past. The Longhorns (35-3) play UCLA (35-1) on Friday night. Texas handed the Bruins their only loss, 76-65, back on Nov. 26. Win again and they’ll play either South Carolina (35-3) or UConn (38-0) in the final.
“With this team, how special they are, they’re good enough” to win the championship, Schaefer said. “I keep telling ’em, they’re good enough.”
Schaefer chasing excellence amid the ghosts of games that got away
Schaefer is leading his fourth team at two different schools to the Final Four. He won a national title as an assistant at Texas A&M in 2011, but the trophy has been elusive for Schaefer in 21 seasons as a head coach.
His Mississippi State Bulldogs played in the championship game in 2017 and 2018. The 2018 nail-biter against Notre Dame still leaves a bitter taste after the last-second defeat.
And before Texas advanced to the Sweet 16 this year, Schaefer said the best team he ever had was his 2019 Mississippi State team that lost to Oregon in the Elite Eight, a matchup in Portland that effectively was a home game for the Ducks.
“That team was better than the two previous teams that played in the national championship game,” Schaefer said. “If we’d have beat (Oregon), we’d have won the national championship, no question.”
After Texas dismantled Michigan 77-41 on Monday night, Schaefer came around to saying his current team might be that good.
“Right now,” Schaefer said, “they’re playing as good as any team I’ve ever had.”
Madison Booker and Rori Harmon lead a Texas Longhorns team that is firing on all cylinders at the right time. (Photo by Scott Wachter/NCAA Photos via Getty Images)
Schaefer left the power program he’d built at Mississippi State for Texas in 2020. A Texas native, he loves to note how he was born in an Austin hospital right next to campus. The hospital has since been torn down, but the Longhorns’ arena is just a short walk from the vacant lot.
Schaefer’s impact in rebuilding Texas was immediate.
In his first season, the Longhorns made a surprising run to the Elite Eight. They have made it to at least the Sweet 16 in five of his six seasons. Last season’s run to the Final Four was the program’s first since 2003, when Conradt was still at the helm.
Along the way, he has recruited players like Harmon, the only player in Division I history with more than 1,500 points, 900 assists, 600 rebounds and 350 steals, and Booker, whose all-around skills and playmaking lead Schaefer to call her “a generational talent.”
After Texas beat Michigan, he and Harmon shared a long hug.
“We’ve been together for five years,” Harmon said. “There’s so much hard work, tears, blood, sweat, adversity that we go through together.”
Schaefer believes he must win a national championship at Texas, not just compete for one. If he can get to Sunday’s final, he’ll face either UConn’s Geno Auriemma, who has won 12 championships, or South Carolina’s Dawn Staley, who has won three.
Schaefer recently recalled a meeting of Longhorns coaches across all sports a few years ago. He noted the success that was in the room.
“(Texas) is a place of elite. It’s a place of greatness,” Schaefer said. “There’s 20 head coaches at the table. As I’m sitting at the table, I look around, and there’s ten head coaches that played for the national championship. Ten. Four of them won it. Six of them finished second. I finished fifth in the country and went to the Elite Eight, and I’m not even in the top half in the room.”
Tough love for a team Schaefer has said is good enough to win the title
Schaefer is not easy on his teams. Even this one. At times, he can be downright harsh.
Schaefer benched Harmon for most the fourth quarter in regular-season losses at LSU and Vanderbilt. After an 18-point loss in Nashville on Feb. 12, he went on a postgame rant that questioned his team’s heart and called the Longhorns “probably the softest team I’ve had in years.”
[Texas Coach Vic Schaefer Rips Team After Vanderbilt Loss: ‘We Have No Heart’]
Booker said the team responded to the scolding. Texas hasn’t lost since, and the Longhorns have been in another gear in the postseason. They have won four NCAA Tournament games by an average of 36 points. Booker scored a career-high 40 in a second-round win over Oregon.
“For me and my teammates, we never want to hear our coach say that about us, especially because he does so much for us,” Booker said. “We say we have heart, and I think after that game we kind of turned it around. You know, I hope he sees we have heart now. Yeah, like, that will never happen again.”
Reporting by The Associated Press.
