Texas – Vic Schaefer has the toughest test of his first year as the Longhorns’ head coach Sunday when Texas travels to Waco to take on Baylor in hopes of stopping an eight-game losing streak to the Bears that dates back to 2017.
“We’re excited about the opportunity,” Schaefer said.
Baylor is ranked in the top-10 and riding a seven-game winning streak since losing at home to Iowa State last month — their only loss in Big 12 play.Meanwhile, the Longhorns have been fairly inconsistent in conference play. They’re 8-4 in the Big 12, but haven’t been able to string together more than two straight wins. Three of those losses came on the road blowouts, and two of them were blowouts, including a 34-point loss at West Virginia and a 17-point loss at Oklahoma State.
“We’ve kind of been on a little bit of a roller coaster,” Schaefer said. “We’re up, we’re down, we play good, we struggle. Defensively is kind of been where it all starts and ends for us. If we can just keep getting better defensively and have a little focus there, I think that leads into our offense and allows us to relax a little bit on offense.”
Schaefer is no stranger to Baylor, though, both from his time at Mississippi State and when he was an assistant at Texas A&M.
In 2017, his Bulldogs met Kim Mulkey’s squad in the Elite Eight. The game went to overtime, where MSU outscored the Bears by nine to come away with a 94-85 win and its first trip trip to the Final Four in school history.
“I have a good relationship with Kim,” Schaffer said. “I think there’s mutual respect. I remember going against them in the Elite Eight and standing there on the sideline thinking, ‘Good gosh, they look like a WNBA team to me that day.’ What a knock-down, drag-out that we had that day. Great basketball game.”
