{"id":193207,"date":"2026-03-06T11:50:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T11:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/193207\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T11:50:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T11:50:08","slug":"texas-womens-basketball-opens-2026-sec-tournament-appearance-friday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/193207\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas women’s basketball opens 2026 SEC Tournament appearance Friday"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

\"\"<\/p>\n

And now the fun really begins.<\/p>\n

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MORE: Will Texas win the SEC Tournament? Check out the Statesman’s predictions<\/a><\/p>\n

This weekend in Greenville, S.C., Texas will try to be the last team standing\u00a0at the SEC Tournament<\/a>, which will serve as a precursor to the NCAA Tournament that begins later this month.<\/p>\n

“It’s tournament time. It’s March. It’s the best time of the season right now,” UT forward Madison Booker said this week.<\/p>\n

\"Texas<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Aaron E. Martinez\/Austin American-Statesman<\/p>\n

Don’t expect Texas to rest on its laurels (or r\u00e9sum\u00e9) at SEC Tournament<\/p>\n

What\/when\/where:\u00a0No. 4 Texas vs. Tennessee or Alabama, 7:30 p.m. Friday in Greenville, S.C.<\/p>\n

TV\/radio:\u00a0SEC Network; 1300 AM.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0Secours Wellness Arena.<\/p>\n

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While going 13-3 in conference play, Texas (28-3) beat both\u00a0Tennessee<\/a> and Alabama<\/a>. Texas finished two games behind South Carolina in a second-place tie with Vanderbilt,\u00a0but an 86-70 loss for the Longhorns in Nashville<\/a> served as the seeding tiebreaker between the schools.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

MORE: Subscribe to the Statesman’s Texas sports newsletter<\/a><\/p>\n

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Since head coach\u00a0Vic 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,\u00a0UT reached the SEC Tournament finale<\/a> in its first year in the conference.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0Secours Wellness Arena.<\/p>\n

“I mean, we’re trying to win a championship,” Schaefer said.<\/p>\n

Texas enters this weekend needing to focus more on its r\u00e9sum\u00e9 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\u00a0LSU teams that will also be using the SEC Tournament as a closing argument to the selection committee.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\"Texas<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Aaron E. Martinez\/Austin American-Statesman<\/p>\n

Is the SEC Tournament a necessary event? Vic Schaefer thinks so.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s current projected top-16 seeds. ESPN predicted that 10 SEC squads\u00a0will make the 68-team field<\/a>, and Kentucky didn\u2019t even earn a top-eight seed or first-round bye in this year\u2019s conference tournament despite being the No. 17 team in the most recent Associated Press poll.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0Kenny Brooks<\/a> described the tournament as “brutal.”<\/p>\n

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“I wish we didn’t have the conference tournament,”\u00a0McPhee-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.”<\/p>\n

MORE: Meet the men who are getting the Longhorns ready for a title run<\/a><\/p>\n

Schaefer didn\u2019t have much of a rebuttal when asked last week about\u00a0McPhee-McCuin\u2019s comments. “Nobody has the January and February that we as coaches and our players in the SEC have. Nobody,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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But Schaefer, who reached four straight SEC championship games from 2016-19 with Mississippi State<\/a>, wants the tournament to stick around. There are some tweaks he\u2019d 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\u2019t always played in South Carolina\u2019s backyard. He also doesn\u2019t love that there are nearly two weeks between the end of the SEC Tournament and the start of the NCAA Tournament.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Throughout this winter, Texas women’s basketball has chased championships. Back in November, the Longhorns beat UCLA and South…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193208,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5278,3112,74833,34522,9764,48614,27,29,537,5276,28,5279,13548],"class_list":["post-193207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-madison-booker","tag-ncaa-tournament","tag-ncaa-women-s-basketball-tournament","tag-rori-harmon","tag-sec","tag-sec-women-s-basketball","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-longhorns","tag-texas-longhorns-women-s-basketball","tag-texas-news","tag-vic-schaefer","tag-women-s-college-basketball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}