In Texas women’s basketball coach Vic Schaefer’s eyes, the Southeastern Conference has a “vendetta” against his program.
Following the Longhorns’ 70-65 loss Sunday at then-No. 12 LSU, Schaefer spoke negatively for several minutes about the schedule Texas was given for its conference games this season. Schaefer’s soliloquy was not new — he expressed similar thoughts as recently as last week on the American-Statesman’s “On Second Thought” podcast — but a packed media room at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center gave him perhaps the biggest stage to air his grievances.
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Texas Longhorns head coach Vic Schaefer disputes a call with an official during the game against Ole Miss at the Moody Center on Sunday, Jan. 4, 2026 in Austin.
Aaron E. Martinez/Austin American-Statesman
What is Schaefer’s conference contention?
NO. 4 TEXAS VS. NO. 2 SOUTH CAROLINA
When/where: 6 p.m. Thursday in Columbia, S.C.
TV/radio: ESPN2; 1300 AM.
For starters, all 16 SEC teams play just one opponent twice over their 16-game league schedules, and Schaefer has taken issue with the fact that Texas played South Carolina twice last season and gets LSU twice this season. He’s also unhappy that the league scheduled LSU and South Carolina within five days of each other on this year’s schedule — Texas travels to South Carolina on Thursday — and that both of those games are on the road.
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Ahead of the 2024-25 and 2025-26 seasons, Texas, South Carolina and LSU claimed the top three spots in the SEC media preseason polls. South Carolina has won at least a share of the SEC’s regular-season title in five of the last six years, and the Gamecocks and Tigers have secured three of the NCAA’s last four championships.
“They obviously have a vendetta against Texas,” Schaefer said. “The league is hard enough as it is. But then to bless me and my group with that, it really has a stench to it. The common denominator is LSU and South Carolina both played Georgia before they played me, and South Carolina was at home today. I’m disappointed. I said that yesterday — I said it to TV — I’m really disappointed in the league for putting our kids in that position. But we play whoever’s in front of us.
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“There’s some things right now that bother me in regards to the schedule, but they don’t call me and ask me about it. I just get it. And unless somebody from my university stands up and says, ‘Hey, what in the hell is going on here,’ nobody does anything. And that’s my frustration. I waited. I’ve seen it. It’s been on my radar since (the SEC) spring meetings when the schedule came out. I saw it and I waited for people that I thought should have stood up and said something. Nothing was said. I mean, we’ve got people in the conference office that are just in charge of women’s basketball. You want to tell me that anybody else in our league gets both these teams back-to-back on the road?”
When asked later to clarify if he thought that a Texas administrator or someone from the SEC should have said something earlier about UT’s schedule, Schaefer replied, “‘I’m upset that no one said anything. Yeah, it bothers me. Anybody? Somebody stand up for my team and my program. Anybody. But there’s people in the office that are paid to run women’s basketball, and again, I’ve seen it, but nobody said a word. So it is what it is. It’s fine. We’re going go play Thursday night (at South Carolina). My team will be ready. We’ll show up and play. But that ain’t it, y’all. There’s 16 games, you can figure out a way if you’re going make me do this two years in a row.”
Texas’ Madison Booker takes a shot during the Feb. 16 game against LSU at Moody Center. The sophomore was named the SEC player of the year, one season after she earned Big 12 player of the year honors as a freshman in 2024.
Aaron E. Martinez/American-Statesman
Does Vic Schaefer have a point about the SEC schedule?
Is it correct to believe that the SEC has a “vendetta” against Texas? On Monday, the conference did not immediately respond to the Statesman’s request for comment on Schaefer’s comments.
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Texas isn’t a complete outlier when it comes to its SEC schedule. Four teams aside from Texas — Georgia, Missouri, Oklahoma and Ole Miss — play LSU and South Carolina in back-to-back games, and Arkansas, Florida and Texas A&M got the Texas-LSU scheduling stack. Schaefer was slightly incorrect in the assessment that Texas is the only team that has to play both of those tough games on the road, but Missouri is the only other program that can share that complaint. Oklahoma even gets to host both LSU and South Carolina later this month.
Schaefer may have a better beef with the SEC when it comes to LSU’s two appearances on its schedule. While Texas has to play LSU twice this year after playing two conference games against South Carolina last season, the Gamecocks drew two matches this year against an Alabama team that was ranked ninth in the SEC’s media preseason poll. LSU has a tough two-game draw this season, but the Tigers also got assigned twice to the 2024 SEC preseason poll’s seventh-place team —Tennessee — last season.
South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley and Texas head coach Vic Schaefer talk after an NCAA women’s basketball game at Colonial Life Arena on January 12, 2024 in Columbia, S.C.
Sean Rayford/Getty Images
Like it or not, South Carolina is next up for the Longhorns
The five-point loss in Baton Rouge cost the Longhorns two spots Monday in the Associated Press poll. Now ranked behind South Carolina (17-1) and UCLA (15-1) teams that it beat back in November as well as a unanimous No. 1 in UConn (17-0), No. 4 Texas (18-1) must quickly turn its attention to the Gamecocks.
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South Carolina won three of the four games it played against Texas last season with victories in the SEC championship game and Final Four. This past Thanksgiving, however, UT point guard Rori Harmon’s last-second jumper lifted the Longhorns to a 66-64 win over South Carolina in a nonconference game played in Las Vegas.
Seven weeks later, Texas will look to improve on a Sunday performance that featured 17 turnovers, 19 allowed offensive rebounds and seven missed free throws. The Longhorns last lost two straight games during the 2022-23 season.
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“We have (Monday off), and Tuesday, we’re back to work,” Texas junior forward Madison Booker said. “If we’re not ready for Thursday, it’s still going to come no matter what. We have to get ready. We have to prepare again, and we have to basically try to fix our mistakes.”