Women's Basketball: No. 1 Texas heads into the SEC Tournament led by the conference's player, coach of the year

After winning a share of the SEC regular-season championship in its first season as a conference member, Texas dominated the league’s women’s basketball postseason awards for the 2024-25 season, which were announced Tuesday.

Sophomore forward Madison Booker was named SEC Player of the Year while Vic Schaefer was named SEC Coach of the Year. Booker was a first-team All-SEC selection, senior guard Rori Harmon earned a spot on the SEC All-Defensive Team and guard Jordan Lee rounded out the Longhorn honorees with her selection to the SEC All-Freshman Team.

Named a second-team All-American by the Associated Press as a freshman, Booker’s SEC honor comes after being named the Big 12 Player of the Year and Big 12 Freshman of the Year last season. Booker paced her team’s scoring, averaging 16 points per game (tied for 13th in the SEC) on 46.4 percent shooting while grabbing 6.5 rebounds and dishing out 2.9 assists per game.

Booker also recorded 1.6 steals per game. Along with Harmon, who averaged 2.3 steals per game, Booker helped Texas (29-2, 15-1 SEC) finish the regular season with the top-ranked scoring defense in the conference, allowing only 55.6 points per game.

The Longhorns head into the SEC Tournament ranked No. 2 nationally in scoring margin with a positive point differential of 25.4 points per game. Schaefer’s club is fifth in the country in turnover margin (plus-8.42 per game), seventh in rebounding margin (plus-9.9 per game) and No. 11 in scoring offense (81.1 points per game).

Texas is No. 1 in the Associated Press Top 25 for the second consecutive week and was the projected No. 2 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament according to the selection committee’s top-16 reveal last Thursday. Nevertheless, the Longhorns lost a Sunday afternoon coin flip with SEC co-champion South Carolina for the No. 1 seed in the conference tournament.

Schaefer ribbed SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, who conducted the flip from SEC headquarters after Texas secured its piece of the league crown with a 72-46 rout of Florida in the regular-season finale on Sunday.

“He said he'd been practicing for two hours, so what was he practicing? Was he practicing for South Carolina to be heads up or Texas to be heads up? I mean, why do you have to practice for two hours? What are you trying to get accomplished?” Schaefer said.

South Carolina’s (27-3, 15-1) only loss in SEC play came on Feb. 9 when it dropped 66-62  to the Longhorns at Moody Center. Even though Schaefer credited coach Dawn Staley’s Gamecocks for proving itself to be one of the top teams in the country, he wasn’t overjoyed that the Longhorns have to take the court for their conference quarterfinal at Bon Secours Wellness Arena in Greenville, S.C. on Friday (5 p.m., SEC Network) as the No. 2 seed.

“I'm not [Georgia football coach] Kirby Smart, I'm not going to hang [Sankey] out, but I don't understand,” said Schaefer, who was named SEC Coach of the Year for the fifth time in his career. “Why does it take two hours to practice flipping a coin unless you've got some motivation for that?

“I'm just saying.”

Regardless, Texas is prepared for the postseason after accruing only two losses while playing one of the nation’s toughest schedules. The Longhorns won nine games against opponents ranked inside the top 10 of the AP Top 25 and became the first program since the 2004-05 season to record three consecutive victories over top-10 opponents (the Gamecocks, No. 8 Kentucky on Feb. 13 and No. 5 LSU on Feb. 16).

“These kids have earned an SEC championship, y'all,” Schaefer said. “I can't tell y'all how hard that is to do in basketball. It is extremely difficult and, by the way, we did it the hardest of anybody that could have possibly done it because of who we had to play, where we had to play them and, at this point, I don't think we really care who we're gonna see next week.

“We're just gonna show up and play like we have all year.”