For the first time in over two decades, Texas soccer won a share of the Big 12 regular season championship. The race for the Big 12 Tournament championship begins Oct. 30, where any team can earn an automatic bid to the NCAA Championship tournament.

The Longhorns enter the tournament as the favorites to win after going undefeated in conference play, despite missing star sophomore midfielder Lexi Missimo for nearly the entire conference schedule. With Missimo back, Texas will hope to capture its first Big 12 Tournament title since 2007.

The Longhorns are led by sophomore forward Trinity Byars, who ranks fourth in the country in total goals, tenth in assists and fourth in total points for the season. After missing nearly six complete games with an ankle injury suffered against No. 15 TCU, Missimo still ranks sixth in the country in total assists, showcasing how game-changing her playmaking is when she’s on the field.

Texas’ duo of Byars and Missimo drives the offense, while graduate student goalkeeper Savannah Madden leads the Longhorns’ defensive back line. Madden has led the Texas defense to seven shutouts so far this season, with six of them being complete game shutouts from Madden.

When she’s on her A-game, the Longhorns have the ability to run away with matches at a blazing speed. Against Kansas State on Oct. 6, Madden kept the Wildcats off the board the whole game, allowing Texas’ offense to score four goals in 14 minutes in the second half and blow the game wide open.

“I think they sensed the hunger,” head coach Angela Kelly said about her team after their first goal against the Wildcats. “They sensed that they could go get more, and that’s what they did.”

That hunger could make Texas dangerous in the tournament, but the Longhorns aren’t the only team competing. Last year’s regular season champion TCU is right on Texas’ tail, finishing second in the regular season standings.

TCU is tied with the Longhorns for total goals allowed on the season, but while the two teams’ defenses are comparable, the Horned Frogs are only 43rd in the country in points per game on the season while the Longhorns are ranked 8th. Oklahoma is the only other team in the conference ranked within the Top 100, so Texas has the offensive edge based on the numbers going into the Big 12 Tournament.

A dark horse for a potential tournament champion might be Texas Tech, which ranks 22nd in the country in goals-against average. When Texas played the Red Raiders back Sept. 25, it took two unassisted goals by Byars to push the Longhorns over the edge, winning 2-0. Since that game, Texas Tech has yet to allow more than one goal in a game, demonstrating its Big 12-leading defense.

While Texas might have the overall statistical edge heading into the Big 12 Tournament, each team will be hungry and ready to take down the regular-season-champion Longhorns come Sunday.

“We’re willing to go through anything and grind through anything, and I think that speaks a lot to the results that we’ve gotten,” sophomore midfielder Jilly Shimkin said Oct. 9. “We want to just keep this momentum going.”