The 2024-25 UT Women’s Basketball Season Showed the World Just How Far This Team Can Go

It’s hard to make the Final Four.

Vic Schaefer knows that because The University of Texas Women’s Basketball coach has been to three of them at other stops in his career.

Jody Conradt knows that because the 900-win Hall-of-Famer also went to three, including as ​the head ​coach of UT’s 1986 national championship team.

And the Longhorns fans that pack the Moody Center know it because they haven’t seen the UT women’s basketball team reach the final weekend of the tournament since Conradt’s 2003 squad did it (also the last time the men’s team made a Final Four, coincidentally).

This firsthand knowledge also comes from the fact that Schaefer’s Longhorns saw their season end in the Elite Eight three times over his first four years in Austin.

And then came the 2024–25 campaign. No, the Longhorns didn’t win the tournament, or even get to play in the final. But they got over the Elite Eight “hump,” as sophomore forward Madison Booker termed it in October.

Just getting to the Final Four is special—and Schaefer, Booker, and the other Longhorns players knew that, too, even a mere 10 minutes after sitting with the disappointment of losing to Southeastern Conference rival South Carolina in the semifinals on April 4, 2025.

“What a blessing,” Schaefer, who famously ends every postgame press conference by saying “Praise the Lord, and Hook ’em Horns,” said after the game. “God blessed me with an incredible group of young ladies that have won 35 games. They’re SEC champions. They went to the Final Four. It’s a hard day. You don’t want it to end.”

It was the Longhorns’ third loss to Dawn Staley and the Gamecocks in three months. But they also beat South Carolina at the Moody Center, shared the SEC regular season title with them as the new kid in the conference, and spent three weeks as the No. 1 team in the country—the first time UT had topped the Associated Press poll in 21 years. The Horns went 29-2 in the regular season (15-1 in the SEC) and finished 35-4 after the conference and NCAA tournaments. They were 17-0 at home and only allowed two teams—the other, Notre Dame—to beat them on the road or at neutral courts.

Booker, who was the Big 12 Player of the Year as a freshman last year, followed that honor with the same win this year in the SEC, plus first-team All-American recognition, while point guard Rori Harmon and center Taylor Jones also earned both national and conference honors. Senior guard Shay Holle, who played for Schaefer in all five of his seasons, finished her career as the winningest player in UT basketball history (male or female). 

A busload of UT students even made the trip to Tampa for the Final Four—their transportation, tickets, and hotel rooms paid for by Booker and Harmon. (Let’s hear it for the age of Name, Image, and Likeness.) It was a great year.

“One game does not define this team,” Schaefer said. “And I want them to hang their hat on that. Their [championship] ring is not only going to say SEC champions—it’s going to say Final Four.”

It’s the exact level of success that UT Athletics Director Chris Del Conte envisioned when he lured Schaefer away from Mississippi State in 2020. Except the job is not yet done. As with Steve Sarkisian’s football team, which also made a “final four” in the expanded College Football Playoff, getting there just makes you want to win those last two games even more. Schaefer’s program is poised—and indeed, expected—to do just that next season, and for many years to come.

“That’s kind of why we come to Texas, because he knows how to win,” Harmon told reporters before the Final Four game with a laugh. “Like, he’s quite legendary.” That’s why Harmon, who could have headed to the WNBA, will be back for a fifth season next year—along with Booker, freshman phenoms Bryanna Preston and Jordan Lee, and several players from the transfer portal. But for now, a look back at a special 2024–25 team, one that will always be remembered by the burnt-orange faithful. 

During this year’s tournament, Schaefer talked about how much it meant to get the University of Texas job, and, particularly, how much he wanted to make Conradt, executive senior associate athletics director Chris Plonsky, and senior associate AD Kathy Harston proud.

“I wanted their blessing because I know what they meant to Texas Women’s Basketball, but also know what they meant to the game,” Schaefer said. “Those are lifers. Those are people [who] have invested their entire life and careers into women’s basketball. It’s a tremendous responsibility for me to be entrusted with the keys to the program. But it’s also why I wanted the job: because my vision is their vision.”

Even though he’s a Texas A&M graduate who won a national championship there as an assistant to Gary Blair and then built Mississippi State into a two-time Final Four team, the history and power of The University of Texas were impossible to resist.

“I see that banner every day in the practice facility,” Schaefer said. “34-0. National champions. 1986. And 2003, for the last time they were in the Final Four. When I took the job five years ago, that was obviously on [the University’s] mind, and it’s something that’s been on my mind. It obsesses you.”

Five years ago, the first order of business was more modest: Catch up to a Baylor program that had dominated the Big 12 and gone 18-1 against the Longhorns during Karen Aston’s tenure as head coach. UT hadn’t even won the conference since Conradt’s 2003 team did it.

Schaefer checked those boxes quickly. He likes to say he only had “six-and-a-half players” his first season at UT, but that cobbled-together roster made an unlikely run to the 2021 Elite Eight during a year that was still greatly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, they lost to Baylor twice, but beat them to win the Big 12 tournament. Schaefer finally had the chance to cut down a net and raise a banner at UT. The same year, they would also return to the Elite Eight.

The Horns picked up three more Big 12 titles (two tournament, one regular season) and one more Elite Eight appearance over 2023 and 2024. By then, everyone besides Holle were players Schaefer had recruited: Harmon and guard Aaliyah Moore came in as freshmen in 2023, followed by Jones (transferring from Oregon State) and Booker in 2024.

It wasn’t bad to start from almost-scratch. Schaefer and his assistant coaches got to pick players who fit with Texas and then shape the program with ​those players​.

“We always talk about recruiting to a fit,” Schaefer said. “And then you can retain them, and you can develop them. That’s always been the secret to my success. The retaining piece is getting harder and harder [due to the transfer portal and NIL]. But if we can get them to stay, and they’ll let us coach them, I think the proof is in the pudding.”

When UT hired Sarkisian away from Alabama at the very start of 2021, they already had an inkling they needed someone who’d be ready for the SEC. With Schaefer, who was hired more than a year before Texas agreed to join the conference, that was not yet a consideration. But his presence made it easy—well, easier—to meet the challenge of South Carolina, LSU, and Schaefer’s former teams.

But Dawn Staley’s South Carolina was to Schaefer’s Mississippi State as Baylor was to Texas’ pre-Schaefer era. On their way to winning three of the last eight national championships, the Gamecocks blew out the candles on MSU’s magical 2017 Final Four team and bounced UT from the Elite Eight in 2021. Before coming to Texas, Schaefer’s record against Staley was 3-12.

So, of course, the Longhorns’ first year in the conference had to start with South Carolina as the defending national champions. When the two teams met in Columbia, South Carolina, on Jan. 12, 2025, it was a reality check for a No. 4–ranked Longhorns team that had been mostly cruising (that one loss to Notre Dame was in overtime), with the No. 2–ranked Gamecocks winning 67-50. 

But on Feb. 9, UT returned the favor in a 66-62 thriller. And while they fell to South Carolina again in the SEC conference championship game, they still secured a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament for the second straight season.

The 2024–25 team still had a couple of “what ifs” due to injuries, with Laila Phelia—a major transfer portal get from Michigan—and Moore both missing the back end of the season. But there was also the remarkable return of Harmon, who had missed half of the previous season with a torn ACL, then returned ahead of schedule by coming back in just 10 months.

That meant the best player on the 2022 and 2023 teams would be back on the court with the best player from 2024: Booker, a shot-creating star whose choice of the same jersey number, 35, as Kevin Durant was both a tribute to her fellow UT great and a well-deserved comparison. Booker’s talent and leadership were so off-the-charts, even as a freshman, that she switched positions from forward to point guard in Harmon’s absence and was good enough to get the Longhorns to yet another Elite Eight. Back at her usual spot this season, she was even better.

“I might be a little biased, but I do think that she is the best player in the country,” Taylor Jones ​​said of her teammate.

Harmon is both the floor general and defensive dynamo, a player whose commitment to defense and effort mirrors her coach’s basketball priorities. Booker said that sometimes when she hears Harmon talking, she can hear Schaefer’s words and teaching. The point guard always wants to go against the other team’s best player and gets offended if her assignment is anyone else.

“That energy and that mentality she has keeps this team going,” Booker said. “A lot of players don’t want to play defense. I was one of them. But seeing her, man. I want to play defense now!”

The season’s peak turned out to be against TCU, which had knocked off Notre Dame the previous round and boasted an incredibly efficient offense led by Big 12 Player of the Year Hailey Van Lith, a fifth-year transfer who’d previously been to the tournament with Louisville and LSU. The No. 2–seeded Horned Frogs were averaging 76.7 points per game, but the Longhorns stifled them in a 58-47 win that was a tribute to the team’s defensive commitment and overall work ethic.

They were moving on to the Final Four, a journey that ​had begun in August, with the players collapsing in the summer heat after outdoor runs. It continued during a season of more than 100 practices, to which the players almost never showed up on time—because they were already on the court an hour early. 

“Anybody that watched that game today, when they turn the TV off, they had to go, ‘Wow, that freaking team plays their ass off,’” Schaefer said.  “Excuse me,” the ever-pious coach then added.

“We’re always going to play hard, no matter the circumstance,” said Harmon. “I just want everyone to understand, this is what Texas is about, and it’s not going to change.”

Schaefer fell to his knees as the clock ran out against TCU.

“It means a lot to us, but I think it means a lot more to Coach Schaefer,” Booker said.

“This team, I wanted it really bad for them,” the coach said when asked about his feelings in that moment by Anna Ambrose of The Daily Texan. “I’m emotionally invested in what I do ... For me, it’s who I am. I can’t sugarcoat that. These kids, it’s why I do it. They know I’m up at the office. They know I sleep there at times. They know when I’m in the same [clothes] to practice I was in the day before.”

Though it will now fall to another team to do what this team couldn’t on the final weekend, this one will be neither forgotten nor replaced. “Sometimes you’ll replace the position, but you might not replace the person,” Schaefer said. “And these kids right here are the best. I’m a better coach, better father, better husband, because I’ve been able to see them each and every day.”  
Schaefer finds it especially hard to imagine a UT team without Holle. This has been her era as much as his.

“Shay Holle has been a rock. She’s as consistent as any kid I’ve ever coached,” Schaefer said. “It’s going to be hard walking in the gym and not seeing her.”

But he’ll probably see her again sooner than later. After the loss to South Carolina in the Final Four, Cedric Golden of the Austin American-Statesman asked some of the players to imagine how they’d feel when Schaefer finally gets that championship, knowing they helped set the stage.

“Well, I’ll be in the stands when that happens, for sure,” Holle said. “I want to witness that. I’ll always have a lot of pride in being a Longhorn ... Getting to be under Coach Schaefer all of my five years here has just been so special. I can’t wait to see him reach that goal, because I know it will happen.”

Praise the Lord, and Hook ’em Horns.  
 

CREDITS: TEXAS ATHLETICS (7)