Kansas City - On Friday night, the minimum temperature in Kansas City is expected to drop to 15 degrees.
That cold forecast might not make Kansas City the desired destination for college students on their spring break opening weekend. However, students on the women's basketball team in Texas don't mind. In fact, the longer a longhorn can live, the better.
For Texas, postseason play begins at 7:30 p.m. With the quarterfinals against Kansas State in the Big 12 tournament on Friday. Longhorns are number 3 seeds. Kansas is the state number 6 seed.
Texas coach Vic Schaefer said, "We want the opportunity to win the championship. We practice for this, we play for it." "At the same time, it's a prelude to the big tournament."
To win a title, Texas needs to win three times this weekend. A championship in the Big 12 tournament has been held out of Texas since 2003.
Since that 2003 Final Four season, Baylor has won 11 Big 12 tournament championships. Oklahoma has won three. West Virginia won one. Even Texas A&M has won the big 12 championships more recently than Texas, and the Aggies left for the SEC a decade ago.
Could the drought be over for Texas? Longhorns has reasons to be optimistic.
Texas (23-6, 13-5 Big 12) is ranked seventh in the nation, its highest national ranking since the end of the 2017-18 season. Of the big 12 teams, only No. 4 Baylor (25-5, 15-3) is more. Baylor is also the only Big 12 program with a better NET ranking than Texas.
"Like [Schafer says], the work doesn't stop, we're not satisfied," said senior center Lauren Ebow. "I'm excited. With how hard we're working and how we click, our chemistry is coming together. I think our future is bright."
Additionally, the Longhorns finished the regular season with eight consecutive wins with a winning average margin of 15.6 points. In the combined second half of those eight games, Texas has been trailed only three times for a total of 139 seconds. During that streak, only one opponent has scored more than 60 points, and Oklahoma was still 20 points below its season average in a 78–63 UT win on February 12.
"I think we're really focused and more consistent defensively right now," said senior guard Joan Allen-Taylor. "We're just finding our rhythm in tournament play."
This weekend, Texas has the opportunity to prove on the court that it's the best of the Big 12. On paper, Longhorn partially failed to do so earlier this week.
On Monday, the Big 12's annual Coach All-Conference team and awards were revealed. Texas point guard Rory Harmon was honored as the league's freshman of the year and was voted into the all-defensive and all-new teams. He and Allen-Taylor were the other team's picks on the all-conference team.
But for the first time since 2013, Texas received no first-team recognition—and had 10 first-team player slots. Six schools took 10 slots. Texas Tech, which finished eighth in the Big 12, received first-team honors. Iowa State, which Texas has beaten twice at an average of 21.5 points, had three.
Schaefer admitted Tuesday that a balanced offensive attack could cost Texas a ballot box injury. (Alia Matharu, for example, leads the team in scoring, but her average of 12.9 points per game is only the 10th best in the Big 12.) Schaffer was also unwilling to say that in 10 first-team honors. None of them were ineligible.
"They are all great kids, great players," he said.
But when pushed, Schaefer took issue with Harmon's omission from the first team. Harmon averages 10.4 points and only three players have distributed more assists in the conference. His 77 steals put the Big 12 ahead of 17.
"You give me 10 players in the Big 12 that do what they do and I'm fine with that," Schaefer said. "But there aren't 10, not five. Both ends of the floor that warrant your scouting report. ... That's the part that stinks a little bit to me."
If Texas gets its way, Harmon and his swindled teammates will get three opportunities for Big 12 coaches to reevaluate their ballots. First, however, Texas must be obtained by the state of Kansas (19-11, 9-9).
This will be the third meeting between UT and Kansas State this season. Texas recorded a 66–48 win over the Wildcats in Austin on January 26. Two weeks earlier, UT traveled to Manhattan and returned home with a 62–51 victory.