Texas' Vic Schaefer publicly bashed his team for having 'no heart.' Six weeks later, UT is in the Final Four

Schaefer's rant could have torn the Longhorns apart. Instead, it galvanized them

After Texas suffered its third defeat of the season -- an 86-70 road loss to Vanderbilt on Feb. 12 in which the Longhorns trailed by as many as 26 points in the second half -- coach Vic Schaefer sat at the podium and unloaded on his team.

"I've had my butt beat before, it's not the first time. It's the first time at Texas where I feel my team was out-toughed. The other team played harder and just, quite frankly, we had no heart," Schaefer said in an uninterrupted three-minute opening statement. "You know, you want to ask me, what does it take to win at this level? What's it gonna take for my team? You gotta have heart. We got no heart."

Schaefer called his group the "softest team I've had in years," said all his players do is "whine" and "complain," and claimed he might call Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte and apologize because "I can't remember when I've been this embarrassed."

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At the time, Texas was ranked No. 4 in the nation while Vanderbilt was No. 5 and featured the leading scorer in the country, Mikayla Blakes. It was a disappointing loss, but on paper, it wasn't catastrophic. But Schaefer's comments came at a time when multiple college coaches were in the spotlight for publicly berating their players after losses. Earlier that week, Tennessee coach Kim Caldwell called her players out for quitting. The day prior, then-Kansas State men's coach Jerome Tang said his players didn't deserve to wear the Wildcats' uniform. 

Suddenly, Schaefer was part of a heated national debate about hard coaching and the line between tough and toxic, tactical and traumatizing.

After Caldwell's rant, Tennessee went 1-8, finishing the season with a historic eight-game losing streak. Kansas State fired Tang just four days after and cited "his comments about the student-athletes and the negative reaction to those comments from a lot of sources, both nationally and locally" as a reason.

But in Austin, things were different. 

The 'defining moment' of Texas' season

The Longhorns haven't lost a game since, going 12-0 since that loss to the Commodores. On Monday night, they advanced to their second straight Final Four in dominating fashion, thrashing Michigan by 36 points in the Elite Eight. 

During the NCAA Tournament regionals in Fort Worth, Texas, last weekend, the Longhorns reflected on Schaefer's comments and their aftermath. Freshman Jordan Lee called it a "defining moment" in their season. Star forward Madison Booker described it as a turning point. But that doesn't mean it's a moment that Schaefer looks back at with pride. When asked whether his call-out was a pre-planned, strategic move to push buttons, the coach hedged.

"I don't, I don't think so. I don't think it was premeditated. It was just a coach that was -- I was disappointed in myself. I was disappointed in the outcome of the game. I was disappointed how we played, and so, you know, I kind of let that overwhelm me at that moment," Schaefer told CBS Sports. "I'm human."

But what fills Schaefer with pride is how his team responded to his criticism and the discourse that followed.

"I think the biggest thing you take from it is how they responded," Schaefer said. "I mean, that next day in practice, Booker's voice, it was as loud as it's ever been, and from that day forward, we've just been way different."

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Schaefer's words cut the team deeply. It's one thing to have your play criticized or a mistake pointed out. But it's another altogether to publicly have your heart, desire and passion questioned and dismissed entirely. It certainly got the team's attention.

"I feel like everyone on this team was kind of just mad," Booker told CBS Sports. "We didn't like the words that he said and thought of us, so we went and changed it. We made sure that he would never, ever have to say through his mouth, through his lips, that this team has no heart. Because we honestly do."

Center Kyla Oldacre agreed.

"I mean, the way he's coached me these past years, I just take what he says with a grain of salt. But I heard his tone, and I knew he was frustrated and upset with how we were playing. The team and I, we knew we have heart," Oldacre said. "We know what we're capable of."

'He does so much for us'

The way Schaefer handled himself after the comments also played a role in the team's ability to move forward.

"I think one of the most special things was he came back a couple of days later, and just wanted to clarify what he meant by this statement, just to make sure that we took it the right way," Lee said. 

Schaefer said he didn't necessarily apologize, but he made sure that his players knew how much he loves, cares and believes in them. Booker believes one reason why this incident didn't fracture the team is the relationships built between players and the coaching staff during recruiting.

"I just think that we came in to be coached by one of the best coaches. We want to be coached to our very best," Booker said. "And I think that was the relationship part -- when we got recruited by him, we knew that he was a hard coach. We heard in the past from other players that he's a very hard coach, and we still came because that didn't scare us, because we wanted to play with one of the best.

"It's nothing about, you know, us being mad at him or anything. It was honestly just about, we don't ever want to hear him say that ever again, because he does so much for us."

Every day since Schaefer's fiery Feb. 12 rant, the players have set out to prove their coach wrong. And as they prepare for their national semifinal against UCLA on Friday, no one is questioning their heart anymore. Intentional or not, Schaefer's words did the trick, and now Texas is two wins away from its first national title since 1986.

"I think you learn something about yourself. You learn something about your team. There might have been a different way, but one thing you can't deny is the way it's turned out," Schaefer said.

"I think it, one thing I can say is it really bonded all of us, me to them, them to me. I really think we've had a level of growth together since that day that I'm really, really proud of."