For three early minutes of Monday night’s Texas-TCU Elite Eight game, Texas led 2-1, and that might as well have been the final score. Certainly it was the game’s realest, most honest scoreline. Bothered by a tight, physical Texas defense, TCU could only reliably score at the free-throw line. The Horned Frogs would finish their 58-47 loss with just 12 made field goals on 45 attempts. A one-point difference felt both tiny and substantial. If Texas was playing twice as well on offense, that still wasn’t saying much. Against one of the better outside shooting teams in the country, the Longhorns were as loath to take threes as they have been all season, taking only three shots (and making two) from behind the arc. Things stayed close and nervy late into the third quarter—a 2-1 game, through and through.
Texas will appear in the Final Four for the first time since 2003. They’re set to play South Carolina, a staple of the Final Four by contrast and a conference rival the Longhorns have come to know well in the SEC regular season. The deep, shapeshifting Gamecocks present a slightly different challenge than TCU did. “If you cut that piece off, the rest of it dies,” Texas head coach Vic Schaefer said, referring to Hailey Van Lith, the glue of the Horned Frogs offense. To cut that piece off, Texas defended in layers: pressing up the floor and hard hedging the TCU pick-and-roll so that getting the ball even remotely close to the basket just seemed like a real chore. “Even if we didn't get a turnover, we really made ‘em work hard to get it in. Then when they got it in, they had to try to figure out how to run some offense. I think we had ‘em pushed out on the floor quite well,” Schaefer said. Hailey Van Lith turned the ball over seven times and finished with just two assists. TCU’s 6-foot-7, seventh-year center Sedona Prince fouled out with six minutes to play in the fourth quarter, leaving the game with more fouls than points—and, a mark of how few paint touches Texas allowed her, more fouls than field goal attempts, too.
The traps and hard hedges—it’s a risky way to live. But a collection of versatile, athletic Texas defenders underwrites the risk. The Longhorns never looked out of step; they were always quick to recover. Point guard Rori Harmon, who averages a little over two steals a game and logged two steals in the first quarter on Monday, spent much of the night on Van Lith. As the clock wound down, the cameras caught her alone, reflecting on the ACL injury that kept her out for most of last season. Harmon dismissed this as a momentary indulgence after the game. “I just was kind of being selfish and thinking about what I’ve been through as a player,” she said. “And of course I was proud of my teammates and whatnot but I had a little moment for myself, just so grateful.” Behind her, the equally unselfish Ndjakalenga Mwenentanda and Kyla Oldacre provided another line of defense, though the 6-foot-6 Oldacre’s signature moment (7:15 above) came in transition, when she leapt to poke away an inbounds pass from Van Lith and took the ball coast-to-coast to give the Longhorns a double-digit lead in the fourth quarter. “Coach gets on us fives a lot to deny it, since our guards work so hard to deny the ball, and I saw it as an opportunity and just went on with it,” she said.
The game was every bit the team effort they describe. But when TCU ripped off a 7-0 run to close the second quarter and then made another comeback bid in the second half, the Longhorns needed some heroics from their star, Madison Booker, a sophomore forward who can do basically everything the game demands. She finished with 18 points, six rebounds, two assists and two steals, and was named the region’s Most Outstanding Player. In a decidedly gritty game, her baseline jumper was a rare beam of beauty. Texas may win ugly, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have some style.
