Texas' elite women's coach Vic Schaefer calls 'em as he sees 'em | Bohls

Vic Schaefer was clearly at a crossroads.

His basketball coaching career was hardly in full swing yet. Heck, he was on the brink of getting fired by the school president after three consecutive losing seasons of 11-16, 9-18 and 6-20 at Sam Houston State. And suddenly out of nowhere, he was apprised of a life-altering opportunity in an entirely different profession.

He almost became a baseball umpire.

Potentially at the major-league level.

He’d already worked as a successful umpire at the high school and junior college level, once came close to ejecting Rice’s Wayne Graham and he even umped a Texas A&M game here and there, and by his own admission, he was pretty good at it. So when American League umpiring buddy Mike Reilly came to him with an offer, Schaefer was intrigued.

When Reilly told him the major leagues was looking for 11 aspiring candidates to go through the Brinkman Umpire School with potential advancement to the big leagues, Schaefer definitely considered it.

He sure wasn’t making many inroads at the coaching profession. Not much money either. After all, he and young bride, Holly, were eating beans and cornbread five nights a week. Swear to God.

But thanks to a heart-to-heart conversation with Larry Davis, his father-in-law, Schaefer said no. He declined the opportunity when Davis told him, “I really think you love coaching, and you’re good at it. I don’t think you’ll be happy umpiring. And if you’re not happy, my daughter’s sure not going to be happy.”

Message delivered.

Happy wife, happy life. And his has been gloriously happy.

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Luring Schaefer away from Mississippi State

He stayed put at Sam Houston four more years. And some three decades years later, this passionate, Austin-born, Dr Pepper-swilling son of a civil engineer who was making just $35,000 at Sam Houston now finds himself as one of the elite coaches of women's basketball making $2.3 mil a year, a top-five salary.

Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte lured him away from Mississippi State, where he ended UConn’s 111-game winning streak in a national semifinal during one of Schaefer’s two championship-game appearances and took the Bulldogs to another Elite Eight, too.

When Del Conte tried to connect with the avid fisherman and hunter, Schaefer sent him back a picture of him hiding in a bird blind shooting turkeys.

“I told him ‘Stop with the turkeys and get on the phone,’“ Del Conte said.

He did and the two quickly came to an agreement for Schaefer to return home to Texas and the city where he was born at a hospital just a fast break away from the Erwin Center.

Texas got itself a premier head coach, a top-10 coach with, well, a noticeable gap on his résumé. Winning a national championship is definitely on his bucket list and likely will happen, maybe even this year when No. 1 seed Texas begins NCAA Tournament play with a home game against Drexel on Friday.

Schaefer yearns for that punctuation mark on his career, but it’s the journey that brings him satisfaction. He’d prefer being defined by his long-term impact on his players’ lives more than his winning percentage.

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He also has a caring, compassionate persona that’s often in juxtaposition with his outward demeanor. His players and associates talk endlessly of his softer, loving side even though he’s frequently seen as a stern teacher on the sidelines. They mention that he cooks and country western dances and runs marathons — three at last count — and always has a smile on his face. At least off the court.

“I think everyone sees him on the basketball court. He’s stomping his feet, giving people direction,” Del Conte said. “He is super demanding, but he is not demeaning.”

Nobody said playing for Texas would be easy

His team echoes those sentiments. He’s a lot more fun than his reputation suggests. His players say he always preaches accountability and coaches them hard and is pretty rigid offensively about shot selection, and that might rub some the wrong way. Several players have left for various reasons, including homesickness. Kyndall Hunter and Celeste Taylor left through the transfer portal. Hunter nailed seven 3-pointers in her first game as a Longhorn but never really saw the court again and eventually transferred to Texas A&M. Taylor transferred to Duke and then to Ohio State.

“Texas is not for everybody,” power forward Aaliyah Moore said. “But that’s not a bad thing. You have to know it’s going to be difficult. Our practices are harder than our games. I’m serious.”

“He’s very demanding,” Shay Holle added. “We feel the pressure but so does Coach Schaefer. Texas is such a big stage. It seems like all the sports here are top five in the nation if not top one or two.”

Schaefer doesn’t excuse his demand for accountability and openly wants to push his players beyond their comfort zone.

“I ain’t got no whip,” he said. “Winning is hard. We went 30-4. You don’t do that with Kumbaya and roses.”

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He’s so attentive to detail that he was highly critical of his team’s performance at the Big 12 Tournament. Not their play. But cutting down the nets because he failed to get Jeremy Rosenthal, his publicist, on the ladder to snip a nylon cord and didn’t get as many keepsake pictures as he wanted.

His team knows the 63-year-old as the man who sends each player a video of him singing happy birthday to her. They cut up during a recent film session and rib their coach. He sang “All my exes live in Texas,” at his wedding.

“He’s never rude to us,” Moore said. “Never disrespectful. He might have a snarl on his face and come across as always aggressive, but he always cares about us.”

Back where it all began for Schaefer: in Austin

Four years ago, Schaefer came home, and his daughter Blair followed him. She was his sharp-shooting guard at Mississippi State and remains in Austin as one of his top assistants rather than accept a head coaching job elsewhere.

“I’m not really looking to change anything until Pops calls it quits,” Blair said. “Why would I? I love it here, and I’ve had so many opportunities here that I’ve been given with my dad and a Hall of Fame coach. I’m good.”

So’s Vic. Damn good, in fact.

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This season it has shown more than ever as his 30-4 Longhorns lost their All-America candidate Rori Harmon in a December practice and rallied behind a true freshman small forward Madison Booker and never missed a beat. Even though Booker had to change positions just three days before a Big 12 game against Baylor, the Longhorns have flourished, winning 12 of their last 13 games and dominating the Big 12 Tournament.

Schaefer should be a slam dunk for national coach of the year after guiding this team through the most difficult circumstances and winning big despite a team that ranks 314th in 3-point shooting.

It’s a bit of a misnomer since Texas makes 36.4% of them and scores 81 points a game, 11th best in the country.

“Vic’s one of the greatest coaches of all time,” Del Conte said. “One of the top five women’s coaches of all time for me.”

He’s on a par with the Who’s Who of the sport, save for his lack of a national championship. He’s on the heels of a Geno Auriemma, Kim Mulkey, Dawn Staley and Tara VanDerveer, but those four have combined to win 20 national titles.

“He’s a magic man,” said Elena Lovato, his long-time assistant. “He prepares these girls through adversity so well he also prepares them for life. He always tells them, ‘I don’t want you in a cubicle. I want you in the corner office on the top floor.'”

Schaefer’s eager to reach those same heights.

Schaefer: 'I don't go fishing. I go catching.'

To say Schaefer covets a championship is a vast understatement.

“It’s what drives me every day,” Schaefer said. “It’s why I’m here. Texas is not a place where the goal is being pretty good. I’m not interested in being good. At Texas you’re chasing greatness.”

That’s the one glaring omission on Schaefer’s résumé.

What would it mean to him after being Gary Blair’s defensive wizard on A&M’s 2011 national championship?

“The world,” Moore said.

“He really feels this is God’s team,” said Holle, Texas’ ultimate defender. “He’s a man of faith. If this season ended with a natty, he’d probably drop to his knees and pray right there.”

The losses hurt him deeply. Not so much for himself but for his players.

After his Longhorns played badly and fell at home to Louisville 73-51, he had signs and posters of the score plastered all over the building from the locker room to the bath room stalls. “Even on my desk,” Schaefer said. “I need to remember, too.”

But a few days into the season, he had ‘em all taken down. He’d done the same thing in Starkville after a 98-38 trouncing at the hands of UConn in the Sweet 16 in 2016, putting up “60” signs everywhere as a stark reminder of the blowout.

“It was embarrassing,” Lovato said. “One year later, we beat ‘em in the Final Four.”

This year Texas is very under the radar since unbeaten South Carolina, defending champion LSU and Iowa scoring phenom Caitlin Clark suck all the oxygen out of the room.

“They’re all playing really good basketball, and they definitely get a lot of publicity for a reason,” Holle said. “But we’re more than capable. If we keep winning, people will be watching our last game.”

Texas, however, is one of just three teams — South Carolina and Gonzaga — to win 30 games. And barring a horrendous officiating call whistling Booker for a turnover against Oklahoma, that number would be 31.

Just gives Texas one more chance to play the disrespect card.

Schaefer applies the same obsessive attention to detail on the court with his entire life. Take his favorite hobby.

“I don’t go fishing,” he said. “I go catching.”

Which means he even does scouting reports on everything from the best fishing holes to the prime time of day they’re biting. A day after Texas dissected Iowa State to win the Big 12 Tournament, he got home from Kansas City at 3:30 in the morning, slept two hours, then headed out with two buddies. They reeled in 34 crappie.

What kind of bait?

No answer. Just a stern look that said don’t ask me for my trade secrets.

There is no secret to his recipe for success, which calls for aggressive play, relentless focus and give ‘em hell defense.

It’s why he can overachieve as he did in his first two seasons in Austin with consecutive Elite Eight appearances.

He’s shown not an inkling of slowing down. So he’ll continue to wake up at about 4:45 a.m. every day, throw down some coffee he home-brews, devour the daily newspaper and fit in his lunch hour, 4¼-mile loop jog around campus.

Schaefer will attack the day with the same extreme determination as he did with his first job coaching the ninth-grade boys at Houston Milby after graduating from Texas A&M.

And when might he call it a career?

“Not so long as I have the energy and the passion to do it,” he said.

Till he’s 90?

“Yeah,” he said.

Why not.

And if this career doesn’t pan out, he can always go back to calling balls and strikes.

Texas' NCAA women's opener

No. 1 Texas (30-4) vs. No. 16 Drexel (19-14), 2 p.m. Friday, Moody Center, ESPNU, 103.1

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Vic Schaefer said no to baseball and yes to Texas and winning