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Across recent games, Texas women’s basketball has made life difficult for plenty of opposing star guards.
In Gainesville, Florida, on Jan. 29, the Longhorns forced Gator sophomore guard Liv McGill into nine turnovers and limited her to 15 points in 38 minutes. Texas held Oklahoma freshman guard Aaliyah Chavez to 3-13 shooting on Feb. 1 and LSU senior guard Flau’jae Johnson to 3-14 from the field last week in Moody Center.
But on the road against No. 5 Vanderbilt on Thursday evening, the Longhorns — with their glistening trio of graduate guard Rori Harmon, sophomore guard Jordan Lee and junior forward Madison Booker — did not have a solution for the Commodores’ guard duo, freshman Aubrey Galvan and sophomore Mikayla Blakes.
Head coach Vic Schaefer’s team fell 86-70 in Memorial Gymnasium, suffering its third defeat of the season and now finding itself unlikely to repeat as a Southeastern Conference regular season champion. Vanderbilt’s 86 points on the Longhorns is the most Texas has given up in a game since its last loss at Moody Center, a 91-point showing by Oklahoma back on Jan. 24, 2024.
“I’m embarrassed. I’m sorry because that’s not the way you represent the University of Texas,” Schaefer said postgame.
The frustration for his unit started early on. Vanderbilt shot 4-5 from three-point range in the first quarter, including a conversion by former Longhorn and senior guard Ndjakalenga Mwenentanda, and missed only three attempts to carve a double-digit lead after 10 minutes.
Vanderbilt continued its efficiency in the second quarter, a stark contrast to the Longhorns’ 32.5% shooting over the span of the first half. Galvan and Blakes combined for 28 points on 61.1% shooting in that time frame, trailing the Longhorns by just a score at the midway break between the two of them.
Behind a 10-point quarter from Blakes in the third quarter, Texas’ deficit got as large as 26 points, leaving its improved fourth quarter as too little, too late, with the margin never returning to single digits.
It’s not as if the Longhorns’ play style differed drastically from other performances. They still earned 11 more shots than their competition in the first half and 23 for the game, stemming from forcing 17 turnovers and gaining 18 offensive rebounds. Rather, many of Texas’ normal looks — from mid-range jumpers to layups — simply fell off the mark.
“It’s the first time at Texas, where my team was out-toughed,” Schaefer said. “The other team played harder, and just, quite frankly, we had no heart. You want to ask me, ‘What does it take to win at this level? What’s it going to take for my team (to win)?’ You got to have heart. We got no heart. And I just thought they were tougher. They were more physical, more aggressive.”
Part of that was the Longhorns’ fouling issues, a topic Schaefer has repeatedly emphasized as a concern. Those worries came to fruition in Nashville.
Texas out-fouled Vanderbilt by eight and was out-shot by 16 attempts at the free-throw line. Blakes, who finished with 34 points, converted 13 of 15 attempts from the stripe. Every single Longhorn who entered the game on Thursday was penalized for at least one foul.
The Longhorns will now look to recuperate from a defeat best described as demoralizing before heading to Knoxville for a showdown with the Tennessee Volunteers on Sunday at 2 p.m.
“We’ll practice tomorrow, we’ll practice Saturday and we’ll go there Sunday and see if we can find a way to play a little better,” Schaefer said. “But we’re gonna have to bring our hearts with us. Some of us left our hearts back in Austin, Texas.”
Official newspaper of The University of Texas at Austin
