Texas’ Vic Schaefer is close to reaching the top of the ladder once more

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Texas coach Vic Schaefer stood at the bottom of a ladder on Monday night at Legacy Arena focused on a few final tasks. The Longhorns’ Elite Eight victory had ended 20 minutes earlier, yet Schaefer still held a curled-up piece of paper containing the essentials of his team’s victory. With Texas headed to its first Final Four since 2003, he was there to brace the ladder as every one of his players and assistant coaches made the ascent.

A coach for 38 years, Schaefer still had instructions left to deliver.

He reminded freshman guard Jordan Lee to pose for a picture before she touched down. Junior forward Ndjakalenga Mwenentanda asked Schaefer, “Does it matter where I cut?” Schaefer pointed to a piece of net by the front of the rim.

Schaefer told star wing Madison Booker to snip a piece of net on the back left of the cylinder as she stepped up. From atop the ladder, Booker asked him where the scissors were.

“It’s right there by the end,” he replied.

Schaefer even assisted his assistants. When it was finally time for him to climb the ladder he had been longing to climb ever since he took the Longhorns job in April 2020, he gave another instruction. He held out the piece of paper that held the keys to Texas’ 58-47 win over second-seeded TCU and told a security guard: “That’s the game plan. Don’t give it to anybody.” Only then did he finally relinquish it and ascend. Schaefer shook the guard’s hand after he had finished cutting the net fully off and returned to the court. He regained his prized game plan with the netting draped over his white dress shirt and brown tie.

Schaefer has climbed a ladder like this before. Eight years ago, he guided Mississippi State to the program’s first Final Four. He took the Bulldogs back to the sport’s pinnacle a year later as well. Both times, their season ended as runners-up in the national title game.

But since Schaefer returned home to Austin, coaching in the city where he was born, he has been fixated on achieving what the Longhorns accomplished on Monday night.

Every day, Schaefer sees the banner in Texas’ practice facility that denotes the Longhorns’ past Final Four appearances in 1986, 1987 and 2003. “It’s something that’s been on my mind,” he said. “It obsesses you. You’re obsessed with it. It’s the only way you’re ever going to do it. (If) you just think about it five months out of the year, you’re never going to get there.”

There are nights he sleeps in his office. There are days when players recognize he hasn’t changed his clothes because he’s wearing the same outfit to practice as the day before. Getting to this point, he said, “has to be something you live, eat, breathe, sleep, every day, 365.” It can, of course, sometimes be a miserable way to live. His family has suffered, he said.

And yet, when the buzzer sounded on Texas’ Elite Eight victory — a 180 from losing in the regional final in three of the last four seasons — Schaefer dropped to his knees, opened his hands and looked up to the rafters.

“I’m humbled, I’m grateful, I’m honored to be able to coach this group of young ladies,” he said. “The good Lord has blessed me with some great kids.”

Schaefer’s head coaching career began back in 1990, when Sam Houston State tasked him to run the Bearkats. His first budget there was $36,000 for team travel, lodging, food, recruiting and postage. A lot has changed since. He is paid more than $2 million and spends his days inside a 75,000-square-foot, $60-million practice facility. College athletics is drastically different. The world is too. But Schaefer has often pushed back against the tidal waves. “The standard has changed so much in our society it seems like, and yet I haven’t,” he said.

The Longhorns play as physically and aggressively on defense as his teams did in the 1990s, he said. Sam Houston State averaged 13.2 3-pointers per game. That’s just over two more attempts than this season’s Texas team, which has been at or near the bottom of 3-point rate nationally throughout the year.

No matter the era, Schaefer has remained principled and consistent. When prospective recruits visit the Longhorns, star guard Rori Harmon is instructed to be honest about how demanding Schaefer can be.

Monday night was the kind of game the Longhorns have grown accustomed to. TCU had more turnovers in the first half (11) than field goals (seven). Horned Frogs star Hailey Van Lith missed seven of her first eight shots. At halftime, as the Longhorns led by only two, Schaefer stressed the need to box out TCU guard Anges Emma-Nnopu (she had eight first-half rebounds, five of them offensive.)

“Who in the heck in this room can keep 21 off the glass?” he asked them.

Mwenentanda stood up, raised her hand and said she could.

“It kind of juiced up my team a little bit,” Schaefer said. Emma-Nnopu didn’t have another rebound.

When Schaefer asks, players listen.

That’s the moral. They soak in his sermons. They’ve grown so used to hearing some of his idioms (and his voice) that they sheepishly admit to sometimes imitating him at practice when he’s not within earshot.

But there was no teasing their coach on Monday. Just praise.

“It means a lot to us, but I think it means a lot more to coach Schaefer,” Booker said. She was named the region’s Most Outstanding Player and scored a game-high 18 points against TCU. “If you had a camera to follow him around, a day in the life of Vic Schaefer, you will be in the gym all day, you will be watching film all day. He deserves it. He puts in the work.”

Booker, a Mississippi native, watched Schaefer advance to two national championships at Mississippi State. She can recall countless other Bulldogs’ high points, too. But Schaefer remembers things that Booker might not have seen on the court.

After working as an assistant coach for 15 years at Arkansas and Texas A&M, Schaefer inherited a Mississippi State program that finished 10th in the SEC the year before he took the job. Colleagues told him he was damaging his career by leaving an assistant coach job at Texas A&M, then a giant in the sport, to go to a school in a state he had no roots in. He recalled driving down Highway 12 every morning and walking into an office with no staff and a roster needing a complete overhaul.

Those moments prepared him and his players for Monday. On the eve of playing TCU, he told his players, “Being comfortable is the worst addiction in life.”

“It’s so hard, especially with young people, because they just don’t want to be uncomfortable,” he said.

Yet the struggles paid off for the Longhorns, and Schaefer wanted everyone in Birmingham wearing burnt orange to reap the benefits of the labor his team had put in.

When it was over, he posed for pictures with the school’s cheerleaders and with “Hook ’Em” the Texas mascot. More than an hour after the game ended, he was still talking with fans and taking selfies with them. (Add selfies to a short list of societal changes he seems to embrace.)

Schaefer’s journey took him from Austin back to Austin. Tampa is the next stop on his coaching journey, headed for a meeting against fellow top seed South Carolina in Friday’s Final Four.

At 64, Schaefer said he isn’t sure he’s reached his full potential. In fact, he said he hopes he hasn’t. But for at least a night, he fully savored Texas’ successes. With pride in his eyes, he watched his players climb the ladder, then climbed it himself. Again.

“Winning is hard, man,” Schaefer said. “For a day, I’m going to let these kids enjoy this. Tomorrow, we’ll have a plan, and there is no question in my mind these kids will embrace the opportunity.”

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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Texas’ Vic Schaefer is close to reaching the top of the ladder once more

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