Texas women beat Fairleigh Dickinson to open season, but clearly are a work in progress

AUSTIN – Rori Harmon doesn't live here any more.

Neither, in fact, do Jordan Lee or Aaliyah Crump or Justice Carlton.

Kyla Oldacre? She gone.

Instead, Vic Schaefer introduced six new players to the crowd of 9,688 fans at Moody Center before a strange season opener that resembled very little of last season's team that fell to eventual national champion UCLA in the Final Four semifinals last April.

It would have been seven but freshman forward Brihanna Crittendon suffered an eye injury in Wednesday's shootaround and unavailable for the first game of the year.

The growing pains were obvious.

And Schaefer made no bones about the need to improve almost overnight after watching his No. 6 Longhorns struggle – relatively speaking by the coach's standards – in an uneven 85-65 win over a solid Fairleigh Dickinson.

"We didn't play very well defensively," Schaefer said. "They got off 20 3s on us, and we pride ourselves on pressure and denying shots, and most of them were wide open. They weren't even contested."

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Texas' seventh-year head coach didn't rip his young team, which includes five freshmen, three of whom were McDonald's All-Americans. He never raised his voice and didn't look frustrated.

He's well aware last year's 35-4 club that reached back-to-back Final Fours offered his best chance to win his first national championship.

Harmon's playing in Turkey these days after being waived by the Washington Mystics after appearing in just 10 games but still part of its developmental squad. Lee's playing for Schaefer nemesis, Dawn Staley, at South Carolina. The sharp-shooting Crump is making jumpers for Duke. Carlton was supposed to be the headliner for the Houston Cougars but blew out a knee and is done for the year. Oldacre is a free agent but got some time in WNBA camps.

Still, the Longhorns were picked to finish second behind the Gamecocks in the SEC media preseason poll, which in itself is a remarkable tribute to Texas after five of the team's seven best players have departed.

It was very obvious this is a new team with new talents and different personalities. For a quarter, it looked exactly like a year ago when Texas raced out to a 15-0 lead and a 30-8 first-quarter advantage. But this FDU team, which went 30-5 last year and won the Northeast Conference in two straight seasons, had more than its share of productive players even if it had no one taller than 5 feet.

Schaefer called them "fearless" and came away impressed. So was Texas' Madison Booker, who is back for her senior encore and is now just seven points shy of reaching 2,000 career points after pouring in 24 points Wednesday night. When she wasn't filling up the basket, she had seven rebounds, five assists and five steals.

She's obviously the centerpiece of this club, its heart and soul, and will be looked to for guidance, leadership and mentorship. Oh and points. Lots of points.

"With a new team, we have a lot we don't know," said Booker, a three-time All-American. "We're learning intensity. We have to learn what playing hard really is. It takes a second to get used to playing hard and playing your guts out for the full game."

Texas ushered in a new season in about an un-Schaefer-like design as could be. The coach who loves the 3-pointers that go in and the rest not so much drew up a play for a long-distance shot right out of the box. For his 6-foot-4 senior center Breya Cunningham, of all people.

Guess this really is a new season.

And what was going through her head when Schaefer called her number?

"I hope I make it," said Cunningham, whose trey was the first of her career. "Then, yeah, I made it. I guess I have Coach's trust. Now that I made it, do I get the green light?"

A grinning Schaefer said, "We'll draw up another one for you."

TEXAS 85, FAIRLEIGH DICKINSON 65

Percentages: FG .453, FT .857.

3-Point Goals: 5-12, .417 (Booker 1-4, Cunningham 1-1, Clark 1-2, Vann 1-4, Prenter 1-1)

Blocked Shots: 3 (Cunningham 1, Clark 1, Bjorn 1)

Turnovers: 9 (Booker 2, Cunningham 2, Spaight 2, Vann 1, Bjorn 1, Team 1)

Steals: 8 (Booker 5, Vann 2, Preston 1)

Technical Fouls: None

Percentages: FG .481, FT .429.

3-Point Goals: 10-20, .500 (Downey 5-11, Valle 2-2, Kaminski 2-3, Biladi 1-1, Crosby 0-2, Gravley 0-1)

Blocked Shots: 5 (Crosby 2, Downey 1, Osei-Owusu 1, Gravley 1)

Turnovers: 18 (Downey 5, Weintraub 4, Biladi 3, Crosby 2, Gravley 2, Osei-Owusu 1, Team 1)

Steals: 6 (Gravley 4, Valle 1, Osei-Owusu 1)

Technical Fouls: None

A_9,688

Officials_Adrienne Gilmore-Nichols, Catherine Chang, Tiffany Bird

Yeah, maybe in February. As it were, Texas took only a dozen of those, right at its average last year that ranked 320th out of 363 teams, and made five. No one made more than one.

In truth, Cunningham will be relied upon greatly, more to shoot 2-footers and not 22-footers. Without Oldacre and Teya Sidberry this year and with a lean but scrappy 6-foot Jayda Clark from Australia as her backup, the second-year player from Arizona will have raised expectations from the coaching staff in terms of her leadership and production. She also has to do better at staying out of foul trouble.

"Obviously," said Cunningham, who averaged just 7.7 points a game last year, "I'm going to have to score a little bit more."

Like double that.

Besides the defensive lapses that Schaefer saw against a team that made 10 of 20 3-pointers, the coach ticked off several other troubles that need to be corrected in short order.

He witnessed way too many bad shots and better selection for those shots.

"One player gets to take a hotly contested shot. One," Schaefer said, not bothering to name the ultra-efficient Booker. "We don't need people taking hotly contested shots."

He looked down at his stat sheet and cited some shooting numbers that did nothing for his disposition.

"Two for eight, three for nine, two for six, three for nine," he read off. "There's a reason those numbers are that way. Those are not what they call great looks. That's on me."

Schaefer understood the learning curve got extended when so many of his best players headed out the door, at least, in part because they didn't all appreciate their coach's tough-love approach. But he's a man who loves challenges and doesn't shrink from them.

He's going to need much more consistency out of Harmon's successor, Bryanna Preston. She made just two of her eight attempts but had three assists and zero turnovers.

Of all the newcomers, Clark showed the most with her hustling style and hard-nosed approach, and 6-2 freshman Isi Etute demonstrated a desire to bring a physical brand of ball. But Schaefer realizes he needs so much more out of so many other players as well.

"We've got a long way to go," Schaefer said. "But we'll get there."

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This article originally published at Texas women beat Fairleigh Dickinson to open season, but clearly are a work in progress.

https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/texas-women-beat-fairleigh-dickinson-055607366.html