March 3, 2025
Back atop the SEC, Texas’ Vic Schaefer returns to familiar territory
By Isa Almeida
Schaefer: 'Winning is really hard. People think it's easy 'til it isn't'
As a Texas A&M alumnus born in an Aggie family, Vic Schaefer didn’t think he would ever end his press conferences saying, “Praise the lord and hook ’em Horns.”
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The Austin, Texas, native grew up going to College Station to see Aggie football at Kyle Field. Then he started his college career at Texas A&M as a premed student.
“I was smart enough to know that my 1.7 GPA in premed probably wasn’t going to get me too many patients, so I better find something else to do,” Schaefer told The Next in a sit-down interview.
So he did. Schaefer graduated with a bachelor’s in kinesiology with a minor in health, later getting a master’s in kinesiology. Now, over 30 years into his coaching career, Schaefer has made a name for himself in women’s basketball. Before taking Mississippi State to two NCAA Final Fours and helping Texas to its first conference title in 20 years, he started his career as an assistant coach at Sam Houston State.
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Two years into his career at Sam Houston State, Schaefer took the head coaching role. He stayed in Huntsville, Texas, for another seven years before moving to his first Power Five program, the Arkansas Razorbacks in the SEC, as the associate head coach.
“My time at Sam Houston State was really critical in my early development as a coach, in just learning to worry about things you can’t control and don’t worry about the things you can’t control,” Schaefer said. “I think that’s when I became a lot better coach.”
Schaefer spent the next 15 years as an assistant or associate head coach for an SEC program. He spent six years in Fayetteville, helping the Razorbacks to a Final Four appearance in his first year. Then he moved back to Texas A&M from 2003 to 2012 and won a national championship in 2011.
Yet it was in 2012 that he really put his name on the map as he started his journey in Starkville, Mississippi.
Building up the Bulldogs
When Schaefer took the Mississippi State job in 2012, the program had only six NCAA Tournament appearances, the last two coming in 2009 and 2010 after a six-year absence.
Under his leadership, the program grew. From 2015 through 2019, Mississippi State didn’t miss a single NCAA Tournament and made it to the national championship game in 2017 and 2018. Several of those Bulldogs teams featured a familiar face for Schaefer: his daughter Blair.
“I just knew what I was getting with him,” Blair told The Next. “I had always just watched him coach when I was growing up, so I kind of knew his system and what his expectations were.”
Blair was part of one of the program’s winningest classes, posting a 126-22 record. As a senior in 2017-18, she started all 39 games and averaged a team-best 32.1 minutes per game. Her performance earned her a spot on the SEC All-Defensive team in 2018.
As the coach’s daughter, she didn’t get the same treatment as her teammates, though. He was harder on her.
“[Blair] earned her way,” Vic said. “There was no question in my mind when I signed her that she would be able to develop.”
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And while those Mississippi State teams were literally family affairs, the Schaefers also found a new member to join their family.
Assistant coach Elena Lovato joined the program in 2014 after meeting Vic when he was recruiting one of her players at Trinity Valley Community College. Lovato coached alongside Vic from 2014 to 2016, then left to be the head coach at Arkansas-Fort Smith. She returned to Mississippi State in 2018 and never left Vic’s side.
Lovato’s second year back in Starkville marked the Bulldogs’ first SEC Tournament championship. After having to walk off the court in previous seasons while seeing the winner celebrate, it was Mississippi State’s time.
“To be able to stand on that podium and have the confetti falling on you, instead of walking off the floor in defeat and having it falling on your back, it’s hard to do,” Vic said. “It’s a moment in time that is a culmination of so much hard work, commitment [and] dedication by your players and your staff.
“Winning is really hard. People think it’s easy ’til it isn’t. I’ve been on both sides of that. We played in five straight SEC championship games at Mississippi State. And at the time, it was us and Pat Summitt’s Tennessee teams. They were the only teams that have done that.”
But 2019 was also that staff’s last year in Mississippi.
When Vic took the job at Texas in 2020, he called Lovato. She was playing on a trampoline with her nieces and nephews at her home in New Mexico at the time. But the decision was a no-brainer.
“Within two seconds I told him, ‘When do we leave?'” Lovato told The Next.
A Lone Star State homecoming
Vic described the head coaching position at the Texas as “the best job in the country.” Alongside Lovato, now his assistant coach and recruiting coordinator, he brought Blair along as his director of basketball operations. Blair had previously served as coordinator of player development for the Bulldogs in the 2019-20 season.
Now-fifth-year guard Shay Holle joined the program in his first season in 2020-21 after being recruited by former head coach Jody Conradt.
“We had like zero relationship coming into [that season],” Holle told reporters on Wednesday about her and Vic. “Then it was COVID, so we couldn’t really build a relationship except on the basketball court … [and] it’s really important to have that balance. After freshman year, we got to spend a lot more time together as a team and with him in the tournament. That really helped me a lot going into my sophomore year.
“Since then … there’s this mutual understanding and trust there. He knows I don’t take things personally, and he can coach me really hard and coach me the way he wants to coach me. And I trust that. And he just trusts that I’m gonna go and work hard every single day and give him my best, and that leads to a great relationship on and off the court.”
Holle is the last player standing from Vic’s first freshman class at Texas, but she will hang up her No. 10 jersey at the end of this season. There are also two fourth-year seniors who have spent their entire careers on the Forty Acres, Rori Harmon and Aaliyah Moore. Though both got honored in the team’s Senior Day, both can still return for a medical redshirt year.
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For Vic, Lovato and the rest of the staff, the players are an extension of their family, and that is key in recruiting. In the past three years, Vic has recruited multiple McDonald’s All-Americans, like Madison Booker, ESPN’s No. 12 player in the class of 2023; Jordan Lee and Justice Carlton, two top-12 players in the class of 2024; and Aaliyah Crump, the No. 5 player in the class of 2025.
“You have to appreciate and respect the fact that somebody’s going to entrust you with their daughter,” Vic said. “I don’t take that responsibility lightly. We wear it every day. We’re going to check on people. We pick up the phone and call them; we’re not going to text them. It’s really important that we have that relationship.
“I think that’s why we’re really good at what we do. I think it’s why we’re good in recruiting. Today’s world has changed so much. Assistant coaches want to walk in a door and go, ‘Hey, tell that kid we’ll pay them $300,000 if they’ll come to our university.’ And to me, I’m going to beat that team every time in recruiting.”
Texas has made it to the NCAA Tournament every year since Vic took charge. Last year, despite Harmon being out with an ACL injury, the Longhorns made the Elite Eight.
The 2024-25 season came with big moves as Texas switched from the Big 12 to the SEC, a conference Vic is more than familiar with. But playing top teams like South Carolina and LSU didn’t stop the Longhorns. In fact, they’ve been stronger than ever.
For the first time since before Booker was born, Texas is the No. 1-ranked team in the country.
“He [keeps] all of us grounded,” Lovato said about the ranking. “We all know that it’s just a number. Nothing means anything until that last game, and that’s our goal. We want to play for [an] SEC championship and the national championship.”
Texas will have the No. 2 seed in the SEC Tournament after tying for the regular-season title with South Carolina and losing a coin flip for the top seed. The Schaefers and Lovato hope Texas’ SEC Tournament debut ends with that same confetti feeling they’ve felt with Mississippi State in the SEC Tournament and with Texas in the Big 12 Tournament.
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