'The epitome of Texas basketball': These are Rori Harmon's Longhorns

AUSTIN, Texas — On Sunday night, shortly after Texas‘ 42-point demolition of Oregon in the second round of the women’s NCAA tournament, Longhorns coach Vic Schaefer grabbed a microphone to address the nearly 9,000 fans in attendance.

It was Texas’ 44th consecutive home victory, setting a school record. But this wasn’t about that. This was a farewell. Schaefer wanted to salute Rori Harmon, who had played her last game in front of the home fans.

“For five years I’ve come to the office and every day I’ve seen Rori Harmon,” Schaefer said. “There’s not enough time out here today to talk about it. You just gotta know how special it’s been.”

The home crowd, on its feet, rained down cheers on the 5-foot-6 point guard with the big smile. They chanted her name as she thanked them for showing up, remembering her freshman year, when games were played across the street at the old Frank Erwin Center and about 2,000 fans would show up.

But this moment almost didn’t happen. Harmon, a five-star recruit among the nation’s top 10 prospects at Cypress Creek in the Houston area, wanted to stay in Texas, a huge disadvantage for Schaefer, who back then was coaching at Mississippi State. One day she told her mother, Shemeya, that she thought it was time to call Kim Mulkey and commit to Baylor. Shemeya, citing a mother’s instinct, asked her to consider waiting.

Weeks later, on April 5, 2020, Schaefer was hired Texas and Harmon found the combination of Schaefer and Texas was one she couldn’t resist. She committed 19 days later, securing a head-to-head recruiting win for Schaefer over Mulkey, and showing he was aiming to restore the state’s balance of power. He told Harmon that she could build a legacy at Texas. Harmon responded by telling him they could build one together — around her.

“I said, let me be the one at the bottom that can help the foundation,” Harmon said.

And now she’s leaving as a Longhorns legend and the cornerstone of a program rebuild, all while spending five years in one of the toughest jobs in college sports as Schaefer’s point guard. In his high-intensity system, there’s no position more important or demanding.

“Everything is your fault,” assistant coach Sydney Carter said of the point guard position. “Everything. She’s wearing everyone’s mistakes as her own.”

Schaefer’s expectations are simple, he said: You are expected to run the offense, and if something goes wrong, it’s not on any of the other players. It’s on you. And you can’t run the offense until he first trusts you to anchor the defense, all 94 feet of it. If you’re soft, the defense is soft, he said. So you can’t be soft. And Harmon, he said, is not soft.

“She picks your ass up at the city limits and she shows your butt the door when we’re done playing,” Schaefer said.

Harmon has exceeded expectations. She broke two 40-year-old marks to become Texas’ all-time leader in steals and assists after starting 152 games — two shy of the school record — and playing 600 more career minutes than anyone who has ever worn the burnt orange.

That legacy Schaefer promised is secure. She is the greatest point guard in Longhorns history and the only player in NCAA history to amass at least 1,500 points, 900 assists, 600 rebounds and 350 steals. And her desire to be a cornerstone also was rewarded — Harmon’s presence was no small part of the program’s ability to attract superstars such as Madison Booker, who scored 40 points against Oregon.

“I wanted to play with a good point guard, and that was Rori Harmon,” Booker said after the game.

Now, there’s nothing else for the two of them to do but to chase Texas’ first national championship in 40 years.

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WHEN HARMON ARRIVED in Austin in 2021, she was so small and so young, her teammates nicknamed her “Fetus.” Schaefer had recruited her hard because he knew she would be prepared to handle his expectations. So from day one, he turned his program over to her.

She was a freshman in college, learning her way around campus and classes, but in practice, there were no training wheels. Schaefer made it clear: This was her team.

“I was an 18-year-old and all my teammates are like 22, 23, and you want me to be responsible for them?” Harmon said. “I just got here. I don’t even know what I’m doing and you want me to check other people and what they’re doing? That was just accepting that and understanding the role that he wanted the point guards in.”

Schaefer expected her to be the physical embodiment of his expectations on the court — his eyes, his fire, his discipline. Carter, who played the point at times on Texas A&M’s 2011 national championship team when Schaefer was an assistant coach for Gary Blair, says there is no other job in the program like it.

If the center isn’t in position, it’s Harmon’s fault. If Booker isn’t where she is supposed to be, it’s Harmon’s fault.

“He ain’t going to yell at a Jordan Lee or a Booker because they weren’t in their spot to start the offense,” Carter said. “He’s going to say, ‘Rori, why did you start an offense and they weren’t there?’ So Rori’s got a defender who’s up in her shorts, but she’s got to be telling people where to go and then got to start the play. Then at the end of the clock people are like, ‘All right, Rori, here, take it.'”

So when Harmon began her journey, Schaefer knew he was pushing his freshman hard. But he offered no quarter.

“I told her, ‘Hey, if you don’t want that responsibility, go play the two, but you ain’t a two-guard,” Schaefer said. “Late in the year, it got to be kind of funny. She’d look at me and go, ‘I know, it’s my fault.’ That was part of the evolution in our relationship, her understanding that you’re in charge, but you got to do it my way, not your way.”

Harmon was the Big 12 Freshman of the Year, the most outstanding player of the Big 12 tournament, and became the first Texas freshman to earn All-America honors as an honorable mention. Her sophomore season, she set a program record by averaging 7.4 assists, was the Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year, and joined Caitlin Clark as the only players nationally to average at least 11 points, seven assists and five rebounds.

By 2023, she was the preseason Big 12 Player of the Year and a national star. On Dec. 3, Harmon had 27 points, 13 assists and eight rebounds in Texas’ 80-68 dismantling of No. 11 UConn, the Longhorns’ first win over the Huskies. Schaefer enlisted her to lock up Paige Bueckers, who went 4-of-11 from the field and finished with 13 points. Less than a month later, Harmon’s season was done, suffering a torn ACL in her right knee during a shootaround before a game against Jackson State.

In her absence, she became a mentor — and buffer — for Booker, who took over point guard duties, seeing even more through Schaefer’s eyes.

“I was able to see how he was treating Madison in that role,” Harmon said. “I understood, I got it. It’s not necessarily that everything is your fault. It’s about you taking responsibility and gaining control of your team. When I was injured, I could really sit back and see it from a different perspective.”

Harmon returned wiser but also to a better team. Carter said even though her recovery was hard, Harmon’s basketball IQ took a big leap, with her peppering the coaching staff with questions every day. Her magnetic personality also continued to have an impact on recruits.

“She stacked them up,” Carter said. “She’s Thanos. She’s got the Infinity Stones.”

Booker, the superstar who has become a two-time All-American and this year’s SEC tournament MVP, credits Harmon with not only wanting to become a Longhorn but for pushing her to work as hard to match Harmon’s intensity.

“I didn’t realize what hard work was until I’d seen Rori Harmon in the gym every day before practice, after practice, getting shots up,” Booker said. ” People want to play defense because they see her play defense. That’s a movement right there. … We want to play like Rori.”

And they do play like her — relentless on defense, unselfish on offense. Harmon also has led the charge there, attempting an average of four fewer shots per game this season than she did in 2023-24 when she was averaging 14.1 points at the time of her injury. She has become Booker’s biggest cheerleader, saying in her postgame news conference Sunday that she wasn’t surprised at all and “expects” that 40-point explosion every game from here.

She sounded almost Schaeferesque.

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HARMON SAID THAT her crash course in basketball from a coach as accomplished as Schaefer has prepared her for anything that comes next. She wants to play in the WNBA and will get that opportunity, though she will be undersized at the pro level.

She could’ve left for the draft last year, but the Longhorns lost to South Carolina 74-57 in the Final Four and she thought there was more left they could achieve. For much of last season, she felt as if she wasn’t herself and was working back into form from her injury, shooting just 37% from the field. She used her medical redshirt and told Schaefer she was returning for a fifth and final season to finish the job.

“We started this together, we’re in this together,” she said. “You don’t just leave somebody behind because it just gets hard one day.”

So Harmon is soaking up every moment of her final days as a college player. She speaks about honoring the program, about rewarding the fans, about having a lasting impact.

“I want to be the epitome of Texas basketball,” Harmon said. “Like when people think about Texas women’s basketball, like what do you think about? Do you think about defense? Do you think about someone who plays with passion, with heart and discipline and focus?”

Harmon is pursuing a master’s degree in sport management. She said her education in a team’s dynamics and the roles of all of its components have her thinking beyond coaching. She wants to be a general manager.

Her only guarantee right now is a chance to keep playing in the NCAA tournament. First, there’s No. 1-seeded Texas’ Sweet 16 matchup against No. 5 Kentucky in Fort Worth, Texas, on Saturday (3 p.m. ET, ABC).

Schaefer and Harmon will have, at most, four more games together. In those moments, she says she hopes people will see her as a fighter. She wants to be know as the one who never backed down from a challenge, whether it was leading the program as a freshman, overcoming a devastating injury or measuring up to her coach’s giant expectations every day.

“To be challenged and pushed so hard for five years, it’s not like he let up, like ‘Oh, let me give you a little break,'” Harmon said. “It was really challenging, but whatever is thrown at me, whether it’s life or basketball, I will be able to handle it.”

This is Harmon’s team, and behind the scenes, she says her conversations with Schaefer are different than they once were, when she just claimed all the team’s faults for herself. She said she understands his methods because she now holds her teammates accountable.

In February, Schaefer made headlines by ripping his team, calling it “probably the softest team I’ve had in years” and said it had no heart after an 86-70 loss to Vanderbilt. When that topic is broached, Harmon smiles, and hints that her study of Vic-isms has led her to an understanding of his motivational strategies.

“It’s almost like I see through him now,” she said. “I know exactly what he’s doing, how he’s doing it. I’ve just seen it so many times. The things that he’s saying in the press conference are to get us to fight back in a way.”

Since that moment, the Longhorns have won 10 straight games — with five of those against ranked opponents — by an average of 26 points, including a 78-61 win over No. 3 South Carolina to win the SEC tournament.

It’s those moments that also lead Harmon to appreciate the warmer moments, like when he ripped the Nancy Lieberman Award voting for the nation’s best point guard, saying he has never had a player like Harmon and it’s a travesty she has never won it.

Or like Sunday night, when Schaefer put Harmon back in the game late with a big lead so she could feel the love from the crowd, then pulled her out to wrap her in a bear hug on the sideline. Then the coach thanked the crowd for giving Harmon a night she’ll never forget. Afterward, in the postgame interview room, Schaefer made Harmon move her name tag to be at the head of the table, demoting him to second. When the players’ time was up, Harmon spent her final seconds thanking reporters for trying to get to know her as a person in addition to a player, while Schaefer looked on proudly.

“She’s as much like me as anybody I’ve ever coached,” Schaefer said last week. “We both live and die with every possession and we’re both passionate. That’s not to say it’s always been peaches and cream. We’ve butted heads, but that’s OK. She’s made me a better husband, a better father. She’s made me a better coach.”

The way the team is playing right now, Schaefer said, gives it a chance to win a title. The Longhorns are driven to have one more celebration for Harmon in Phoenix, this time with confetti falling and Harmon hoisting a trophy.

“She’s the best point guard to ever play here and one of the best players to ever play here,” Carter said. “Rori has changed this program. Her jersey should definitely be in the rafters.”