​Madison Booker, Texas’ go-to player after a wave of offseason personnel losses, led the way with 24 points in Wednesday’s season-opening win over Fairleigh Dickinson in Austin. (Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman)
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.”Sign up for Kirk Bohls’ newsletterSign up for Kirk Bohls’ new newsletter for news, exclusive analysis and insights on University of Texas sports.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.
Texas Longhorns forward Madison Booker (35) and guard Zya Vann (9) battle Fairleigh Dickinson Knights guard Ane Valle (11) for the rebound in the second half of the Texas Longhorns’ 85-65 win over the Fairleigh Dickinson Knights at the Moody Center in Austin, Nov. 4, 2026. (Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman)
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