Texas is all business, and they unapologetically took care of it vs. South Carolina in SEC title game: 'Flashy doesn't win championships'

Jacob Kupferman via Getty Images

GREENVILLE, S.C. — Madison Booker is unmoved by anyone claiming that Texas basketball lacks a certain oomph. 

“I mean, you don’t really get cool points on the board when you do something crazy,” Booker said, as if this should be the most obvious thing in the room. 

To everyone in burnt orange, it is. 

“Flashy doesn’t win championships,” sophomore guard Bryanna Preston told Yahoo Sports. “Discipline does.” 

Many ding Texas for not being particularly fun or flashy. They don’t pull up for transition 3-pointers on the regular, nor do they take many perimeter attempts at all. No one is crashing the rim for a pre-game dunk. Their star duo is passionate, but collected and always composed.

Pizzaz? Drama? Never heard of her. This team is all business.  

The SEC champion Longhorns leave the cool points for others, instead collecting the ones that matter. They are the season’s unobtrusive Final Four contender, doubling down on the label in a dominant 78-61 victory over South Carolina on Sunday in the SEC tournament championship game. The program’s first SEC title followed last year’s loss to South Carolina in the title game of their inaugural SEC season, and it was the seventh time in 421 days the programs faced each other.  

The win puts the Longhorns in contention for the No. 3 overall seed in the tournament, a plug that would place them near home in the Fort Worth regional. They’ve taken down two of the three teams projected as No. 1 seeds in the NCAA Tournament. Their non-conference Wins Above Bubble (WAB) ranks second behind UConn. Nearly half of their 31 wins are against Associated Press Top 25 teams. 

“I think everyone here will agree that flashiness, it might not be our strong suit or something that we just [take] pride in, but it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t get the job done,” Preston said. 

The Longhorns languish below more heavily discussed contenders, even though they are a part of the season’s clear top tier. No. 1 UConn is, well, UConn, a perennial powerhouse with droves of All-American talent building legacies annually every April. UCLA is the Hollywood darling in the country’s second-largest city, pushing out a documentary tied in name, image and likeness money that chronicles their rise to a program-first Final Four berth. 

South Carolina and LSU feature two of the game’s largest coaching personalities who enjoy ruffling a few feathers, and players to match. The most Texas head coach Vic Schaefer does is toss his suit jacket, a stress meter that never needed checking in a wire-to-wire victory. It’s their second win in three games against the Gamecocks this year. And despite it going down as a “neutral” site, they did it in front of a raucous, garnet-heavy Bon Secours Wellness Arena crowd, situated two hours from Columbia. 

“From a confidence standpoint right now, we are, our kids are pretty confident,” Schaefer said. “I thought they played like that tonight.” 

Texas runs on defense, and it used it expertly to explode out of the gates for a 14-0 lead that surprised even Schaefer. Staley was forced to take a timeout less than four minutes into the game, with the Gamecocks having attempted merely one field goal. The three-time reigning SEC tournament champions unraveled and never quite put the pieces back together. They came in having won nine of the last 11 tournaments. 

"Every time that we would try to make a run, we had just like mental lapses, like uncharacteristic turnovers," Staley said. "Some of it was us, some of it was Texas — and they took advantage of it every single time."

Texas ranks ninth in opponent turnover rate (27.5%), 11th in turnovers per game (22.7), ninth in steal rate (6.9%) and fourth in block rate (4.5%). They ratchet up the pressure immediately and don’t give up, making inbounds difficult and forcing five-second violations regularly. 

“When you’re getting steals, just like when we’re getting the stop, getting the charge, that’s fun for us,” Booker, who earned tournament MVP, said. “Maybe people that really don’t understand basketball like that, that you gotta play both sides of the basketball, [it’s not].” 

In the opening run, Texas scored 10 of its 14 points off of five South Carolina turnovers and went 7-of-7 on layups. There was nothing extra on them.

“We're definitely playing with ketchup and mustard, nothing [else] no relish, no onion,” Rori Harmon told Yahoo Sports after the 85-68 dismantling of Ole Miss in the semifinal. “I think that works for us, because we work a lot on fundamentals. And in games like this, we fall back on our habits more than anything.”

It starts with Harmon, the steady veteran leader who has been more mature than her age since showing up on campus in Austin. The SEC all-tournament team selection is an extension of Schaefer, echoing her longtime head coach’s “Vic-isms” like the hot dog toppings. 

Texas led by 45-28 at the break over a fellow Final Four contender. Schaefer is now 111-0 when leading by at least 10 at the half. The most dazzling thing about them might have been assistant coach Blair Schaefer’s jacket, or Preston tearing over to the bench to chest-bump Harmon after taking an offensive foul in an 11-point game. The highlight reel circulating on social media might end up being Preston being called for an objectionable technical when she yelled for a back-breaking jumper that put Texas back up, 70-56, with 3:16 to play. 

Booker closed it out with her bread-and-butter back-to-back mid-range jumpers for 18 points (8-of-15) with four rebounds and two assists. Justice Carleton scored 15, shooting 6-of-8 with four rebounds and four assists to earn all-tournament honors. Center Breya Cunningham set the tone early with two blocks and stifling defense inside.

Nine players scored, everyone brought down at least one rebound and all but two notched an assist. Five players secured a block and another bunch of five a steal. 

“Each and every one of us that played today did our job and our role and what we needed to do out there,” center Kyla Oldacre said. “And not just be out there to be cool. We’re here to play.”

The business of being a Longhorn is eating in the paint. They scored 40 points on 20-of-34 shooting there while South Carolina contested 76% of those shots, per ESPN Stats and Information. It was the 17th game they scored at least 40 inside. They were plus-nine on the boards, neutralizing South Carolina center Madina Okot and limiting forward Joyce Edwards to six points in the first half, all in the second quarter. 

Is that what basketball highlights are made of? Maybe not. But dreams of a shiny championship trophy drive this group more than the sparkle elsewhere. With a significant one in their pocket against a team that’s had their number, they’re locked into a berth to compete for the bigger one — whether people think they’re a flashy team or not.