Just three days ago, the Texas Longhorns fell to rival Oklahoma in a tightly contested game. After that game, head coach Vic Schaefer questioned his team’s effort. In response, the Longhorns dominated the Cincinnati Bearcats at home 67-50.
In the home win against the Bearcats, the Longhorns had to live life without another impactful player as the Longhorns had already lost junior guard Rori Harmon. Freshman point guard Madison Booker sat on the bench with an injured hamstring.
“She just stepped wrong yesterday in half court offense and tweaked her hamstring,” Schaefer said.
Schaefer also mentioned that Booker “wanted to play real bad today,” but the decision was made to be overly cautious about the injury. So without their two starting point guards, the task of picking up the slack was placed on the rest of the team. For the first time this season, graduate guard Shaylee Gonzales started the game running the offense.
Gonzales tallied 13 points, six rebounds and three assists all while only turning the ball over once. It was a performance Schaefer was extremely pleased with.
“Shaylee really was special today, just put our team on her back and led us,” Schaefer said. “She did a great job at the point (guard position).”
With only a couple minutes left in the fourth quarter, and the game well in hand for the Longhorns, Schaefer embraced two of his veterans, senior guard Shay Holle and Gonzales, as they checked out and gave them some uplifting words.
“I said I’m really proud of them, they really played well,” Schaefer said.
The veteran performance was not limited to guards as senior forward Taylor Jones filled up the stat sheet. Jones finished the game with 13 points, nine rebounds, seven blocks and three steals. After the game, Jones credited the performance with reminding herself of who she is.
“In practice, coach (Schaefer) really challenged us to be a lot more physical, and in the practices, I just reminded myself that I can,” Jones said.
Coach Schaefer leaned on the more experienced players on his team as four of the starting five, composed of Holle, Gonzales, Jones and Moore, are all classified as juniors or older. All four played at least 34 minutes of a 40 minute game. Another change in today’s game plan came on the defensive side of the ball where the Longhorns played an uncharacteristic zone defense. Schaefer decided to play zone this morning.
“I told my staff, ‘We’re gonna play some zone today,’” Schaefer said.
Yet the change was difficult for Schaefer, a coach who enjoys playing fast man-on-man defense, to let his team sit and wait for the Bearcats to make their first move.
“It’s like poison, man, but my kids were pretty fired up about it,” Schaefer said.
Texas will travel to Waco to take on the Baylor Bears in their next game. The Longhorns will be looking for revenge as Baylor came into the Moody Center earlier this year and gave Texas their first loss of the season.
