Throughout this winter, Texas women’s basketball has chased championships. Back in November, the Longhorns beat UCLA and South Carolina for the title at the Players Era event in Las Vegas. They then came up short in the SEC regular-season championship race that spanned the months of January and February.

And now the fun really begins.

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MORE: Will Texas win the SEC Tournament? Check out the Statesman’s predictions

This weekend in Greenville, S.C., Texas will try to be the last team standing at the SEC Tournament, which will serve as a precursor to the NCAA Tournament that begins later this month.

“It’s tournament time. It’s March. It’s the best time of the season right now,” UT forward Madison Booker said this week.

Texas Longhorns guard Madison Booker (35) and guard Jordan Lee (7) celebrate a score during the game against Georgia at the Moody Center on Thursday, Feb. 26, 2026 in Austin.

Texas Longhorns guard Madison Booker (35) and guard Jordan Lee (7) celebrate a score during the game against Georgia at the Moody Center on Thursday, Feb. 26, 2026 in Austin.

Aaron E. Martinez/Austin American-Statesman

Don’t expect Texas to rest on its laurels (or résumé) at SEC Tournament

What/when/where: No. 4 Texas vs. Tennessee or Alabama, 7:30 p.m. Friday in Greenville, S.C.

TV/radio: SEC Network; 1300 AM.

As the tournament’s No. 3 seed, Texas received a double-bye into Friday’s quarterfinals and didn’t have to play during the first two days. The Longhorns (28-3) will face 11th-seeded Alabama (23-9) at Bon Secours Wellness Arena.

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While going 13-3 in conference play, Texas (28-3) beat both Tennessee and Alabama. Texas finished two games behind South Carolina in a second-place tie with Vanderbilt, but an 86-70 loss for the Longhorns in Nashville served as the seeding tiebreaker between the schools.

“I think we all have an edge to us,” senior point guard Rori Harmon told the American-Statesman’s “On Second Thought” podcast. “We didn’t really obtain the goal of winning the conference and whatnot, but I think now there’s still an opportunity for more championships.”

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Since head coach Vic Schaefer came to Austin ahead of the 2020-21 season, Texas has consistently contended for championships at the conference level. Texas won the Big 12 title in 2022 and 2024 and was that league’s runner-up in 2023. Last year, UT reached the SEC Tournament finale in its first year in the conference.

That track record would suggest that Texas won’t take it easy in Greenville. Not even with a bigger postseason competition on the horizon. Last season, Booker and Harmon respectively played 113 and 109 of a possible 120 minutes over a three-day stretch at Bon Secours Wellness Arena.

“I mean, we’re trying to win a championship,” Schaefer said.

Texas enters this weekend needing to focus more on its résumé than rest anyway. This past Sunday, the NCAA Tournament’s selection committee announced that Texas would have claimed the fourth and final No. 1 seed had the NCAA Tournament started that day. Lurking among the projected No. 2 seeds, though, are Vanderbilt and LSU teams that will also be using the SEC Tournament as a closing argument to the selection committee. 

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Texas Longhorns head coach Vic Schaefer disputes a call during the game against Georgia at the Moody Center on Thursday, Feb. 26, 2026 in Austin.

Texas Longhorns head coach Vic Schaefer disputes a call during the game against Georgia at the Moody Center on Thursday, Feb. 26, 2026 in Austin.

Aaron E. Martinez/Austin American-Statesman

Is the SEC Tournament a necessary event? Vic Schaefer thinks so.

For Texas to win a championship this weekend, the Longhorns must emerge from a bloated bracket that features five of the NCAA Tournament selection committee’s current projected top-16 seeds. ESPN predicted that 10 SEC squads will make the 68-team field, and Kentucky didn’t even earn a top-eight seed or first-round bye in this year’s conference tournament despite being the No. 17 team in the most recent Associated Press poll.

Since the SEC has proven to be an ultra-competitive league, Ole Miss coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin wondered aloud last month if another week of teams beating each other up at the conference tournament was necessary. Kentucky’s Kenny Brooks described the tournament as “brutal.”

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“I wish we didn’t have the conference tournament,” McPhee-McCuin said. “All we do in the SEC is beat each other up. If you look at the history of our league, we always have anywhere from four to five to six teams in the Sweet 16 because this is a really good league.”

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Schaefer didn’t have much of a rebuttal when asked last week about McPhee-McCuin’s comments. “Nobody has the January and February that we as coaches and our players in the SEC have. Nobody,” he said. 

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But Schaefer, who reached four straight SEC championship games from 2016-19 with Mississippi State, wants the tournament to stick around. There are some tweaks he’d like to make, though. No offense to Greenville, which has hosted seven of the last eight conference tournaments, but Schaefer would prefer it if the event wasn’t always played in South Carolina’s backyard. He also doesn’t love that there are nearly two weeks between the end of the SEC Tournament and the start of the NCAA Tournament.

“Without a doubt, it’s one of the great events that we have,” Schaefer said. “My team, me, we’re all about having opportunities to win championships and to win an SEC tournament championship’s really hard. It’s one of the hardest things you can do. If you can get through that tournament, you can get through any tournament. I like the tournament. I think it’s great for our game, it’s certainly good for our league.”