March Madness 2025: Previewing Texas' Women's Final Four Chances

The Texas Longhorns are back in the FInal Four for the first time in over 20 years. It's been a long road back for the Longhorns; they've always been a solid, reliable team over the years; between their last Final Four appearance in 2003 and now, they've missed the field just four times, and posted a losing record just twice.

But while Texas was very often good in that span, they couldn't seem to find the magic come March. They lost in the first or second round nine times, and the Sweet 16 another four times. The Longhorns have come painfully close in recent seasons under head coach Vic Schaefer; in the four years prior to this, Texas made the Elite Eight three times, and the results of those games were as follows:

2021: 6-seed Texas blown out by top seed South Carolina, 62-34.
2022: 2-seed Texas falls 59-50 to top seed Stanford.
2024: 1-seed Texas upset by third seed North Carolina State 76-66.

But after years of being not quite good enough, the Longhorns are here. Are they going to stay for a while? Or will they head home early? Let's break it down.

Biggest Strengths: Defense, straight up. Schaefer's system prioritizes defensive efficiency and limiting scoring chances, and the Longhorns excel at doing just that. The singular team who scored more than 60 points on them was William and Mary in the first round, as part of a 105-61 bludgeoning by Texas.

They want to grind you down, deny easy baskets, and suck the life out of your offense. Forward Madison Booker is a force on both ends of the floor, while Rori Harmon is one of the best on-ball defenders in the sport. They have size on the interior in Kyla Oldacre and Taylor Jones, and athleticism to burn on the perimeter. Even good offenses, like Tennessee and TCU, found themselves utterly flummoxed by this aggressive system.

Offensively, Booker is the best midrange shooter in the sport, and takes full advantage of that. They look for buckets in the paint, and try and use their size to their advantage.

Biggest Weakness: This team does not shoot three pointers. I don't mean they don't make them (they also don't REALLY make them, shooting a collective 29 percent from three on the year), I mean they don't TAKE them. They've attempted 24 threes throughout the tournament. That's just six per game. To give you an idea of how few that is, UCLA attempted 24 against LSU in the Elite Eight, UConn attempted 26 against Oklahoma, and South Carolina more than doubled their per-game threes against Maryland in the Sweet 16.

For all of Booker's mid-range magic, not having outside shooting in your gameplan makes you significantly easier to defend. They're not out here to run-and-gun, they want to grind and get rebounds and knock down twos.

That lack of outside shooting makes it very tough for Texas to play from behind; they have to keep it close or they wind up too far back to make up the gap. Get off to a slow start, and it's curtains.

Best Case Scenario: The Longhorns do to the Gamecocks what they did in February: they grind South Carolina's offense to a halt, out-rebound and out-physical them, and rely on their offensive efficiency to win the day. Then, they repeat the process against either UCLA or UConn, slowing them down to the point of frustration and cut down the nets in Tampa.

Worst-Case Scenario: The outside shooting woes haunt them as South Carolina gets them at arm's length and just keeps them there in an ugly rock fight of a game. After all, the Gamecocks beat the Longhorns by 17 and 19 in their other two meetings this season, and a third episode of that series is a strong possibility.