Going into this upcoming season, Texas women’s basketball coach Vic Schaefer knows that his colleagues believe he has the best team in the Southeastern Conference.

On Wednesday, Texas topped the preseason poll that was voted on by SEC coaches. A Texas team that is set to return starters Madison Booker and Rori Harmon beat out South Carolina for the top spot while LSU, Oklahoma and Tennessee were respectively picked to finish third, fourth and fifth.

“Coach always says it’s harder to lead from the front,” Harmon told reporters this week. “We’re just super grateful and honored that the league has chose us to be first. It’s just a really competitive league. Every game is going to be really tough and really challenging and super fun, it’s just really great for women’s basketball.”

Last season, Texas debuted in the SEC and shared the conference’s regular-season championship with South Carolina. Texas split the two games it played against South Carolina during the regular season, but the Longhorns were then beaten by the Gamecocks in the SEC Tournament’s championship game and again at the Final Four.

But while the SEC coaches and media disagreed on a preseason champion, they agreed on Booker. A junior forward, Booker was crowned as the conference’s preseason player of the year by both parties.

Booker is coming off a season in which she averaged 16.3 points and 6.6 rebounds per game. Booker was named the SEC Player of the Year during the 2024-25 season, and she is looking to join Georgia’s Kelly Miller (2000-01), LSU’s Seimone Augustus (2005-06), Kentucky’s A’dia Mathies (2012-13), South Carolina’s Tiffany Mitchell (2014-15), South Carolina’s A’ja Wilson (2016-18), Kentucky’s Rhyne Howard (2020-21) and South Carolina’s Aliyah Boston (2022-23) as the repeat winners of that award since 2000.

This week, Booker was also voted onto the Associated Press’ preseason All-American team. Booker was joined on that preseason honor roll by Notre Dame guard Hannah Hidalgo, South Carolina guard Ta’Niya Latson, UCLA center Lauren Betts and UConn forward Sarah Strong.