March Madness: Texas, South Carolina reunite at Final Four for fourth and final battle

Apr 4, 2025 - 06:00

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March Madness: Texas, South Carolina reunite at Final Four for fourth and final battle

TAMPA, Fla. — On Thursday afternoon, Texas women's basketball players Shay Holle, Rori Harmon and Madison Booker walked into the media room at Amalie Arena for a press conference.

That scene wasn't unique. Superstitiously sitting to head coach Vic Schaefer's left and right each time, Harmon and Booker have participated in all but one of UT's press conferences in the 2025 NCAA Tournament. Holle is a senior and a veteran in these settings.

But even though the podium that Booker, Harmon and Holle were sitting on looked much like the ones that the players have used at Moody Center and various venues outside of Austin, this stage was metaphorically bigger. On Thursday, the trio was speaking in preparation of the Final Four.

South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley and Texas' Vic Schaefer talk after their 2024 game at Colonial Life Arena last year in Columbia, S.C. The coaches will face each other in the Final Four on Friday night with a trip to the NCAA Tournament championship game on the line.

This is a new experience for the Longhorns. Texas last reached a Final Four in 2003 and there are no 22nd-year seniors on the roster. None of the three transfers made it to the Final Four at their previous stops, either.

Schaefer, though, isn't new to these streets. He has joined Gary Blair, Kim Mulkey, Marianne Stanley and C. Vivian Stringer as the only coaches to lead two different women's teams to the Final Four. He previously guided Mississippi State to the 2017 and 2018 national championship games. He was a longtime lieutenant for Blair at Arkansas and Texas A&M, so he also reached this stage of the NCAA Tournament with the Razorbacks in 1998 and with A&M's 2011 title team.

"But obviously he's been here before. That just means a lot," Harmon said. "That's kind of why we come to Texas, because he knows how to win."

Texas guard Rori Harmon looks for a way around defense from South Carolina forward Maryam Dauda during a game at Moody Center on Feb. 9. South Carolina won two of their three matchups with Texas this season, including the last one in the SEC championship game.

Final Four foes Texas, South Carolina aren't strangers

If any of Schaefer's previous trips to the Final Four mirror this year's run, it may be the one from 2017. But that isn't because both Mississippi State and Texas played good defense and held their opponents to under 58 points per game. Nor was it because each team had a Mississippi-raised All-American — Victoria Vivians for Mississippi State and Booker for Texas — leading the charge.

It's because of the opponent.

Back in 2017, Mississippi State played South Carolina once in the regular season, once in the SEC championship game and once in the national championship game. The Gamecocks went 3-0 in those games. Eight years later, Texas (35-3) and South Carolina (34-3) are preparing to meet for the fourth time this season. They split their regular-season series with South Carolina earning a 67-50 win in Columbia and UT recording a 66-62 win in Austin. The Gamecocks then beat Texas 64-45 less than a month ago in the SEC championship game.

There are no secrets between Texas and South Carolina at this point, so how do you prepare for that kind of familiarity? On Thursday, both teams addressed that topic.

"We're not going to stray too far left or right from the things that we've done that were positive that would help us," Staley said. "And, knock on wood, we can identify the things that we did when we did get beat in Texas, what those were that put us in a bad position."

Said Holle: "It's our fourth time playing them, but it's their fourth time playing us. It goes both ways in the sense obviously on both sides it's going to be a well-scouted game; we'll know play calls, all that stuff. It's really how you execute it. You can put in different things. I'm sure they're doing it as well."

Texas forward Taylor Jones battles South Carolina forward Chloe Kitts for the rebound during a game at Moody Center on Feb. 9. Texas won the game 66-62.

This will be just the 13th time in UT's history that a tournament game has been a rematch of a regular-season game. In none of those previous instances did Texas reunite with an opponent it had played more than once ahead of the NCAA Tournament.

"I feel like we do know them inside out as much as they probably know us inside out," Harmon said. "There's a saying that we've been living by since the tournament started, but once talent meets talent and all that, it's basically it doesn't really matter anymore."