Winners of three-straight games, the Longhorns return home to face Oklahoma State at 7 p.m. Wednesday with a new face sporting a jersey on the bench.
Junior guard Emily Johnson, who previously served as a team manager, will be joining the team. However, she will not compete this season, according to head coach Karen Aston.
Johnson will officially join the injury-prone Longhorns next season with two years of eligibility remaining.
The worst loss for the Longhorns came with senior forward Nneka Enemkpali’s season-ending ACL tear in January. She the surgery to repair the ACL last Wednesday.
“I think it’s the first of a two-part surgery,” Aston said. “We’ve acknowledged we want to play the remainder of the season on her behalf.”
After losing six of seven since Enemkpali went down, the Longhorns are finally settling in — on and off the court.
On the court, they have won three in a row. Off the court, Texas leads the conference with eight student-athletes named Thursday to the 2015 Academic All-Big 12 Conference Women’s Basketball Team.
Additionally, the Longhorns are seeing more productivity from the young leaders of the team. Freshmen guards Ariel Atkins and Brooke McCarty continue to deliver strong double-digit performances, proving themselves as key players to Texas’s offense.
Starting the past 10 games for Texas, McCarty was named Phillips 66 Big 12 Freshman of the Week. Both Atkins and McCarty have won the award twice.
Oklahoma State (18–8, 8–7 Big 12) head into Austin with a similar record to the Longhorns (18–8, 7–8 Big 12). In Stillwater, Oklahoma, for the first of the two matchups this year, the Cowgirls escaped 60–66.
The game will air on the Longhorn Network.