Coach Vic: Articles & Interviews

Discussion in 'Women’s Basketball' started by GameOfHorns, Apr 29, 2020.

  1. GameOfHorns

    GameOfHorns 250+ Posts

    Haven’t listened yet. Don’t think it’s already been posted . . . #HookEm

     
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  2. racerx5908

    racerx5908 2,500+ Posts


    I find it fascinating how coaches, when they change jobs, go ALL IN. What I mean is that this is an Aggie and he's now got the Longhorn t-shirt and burnt orange cow hide seats (although the shelves in the back are empty because they must still be moving in).

    I know almost all coaches never end up coaching at their alma mater. It's just interesting this dynamic causing an Aggie to be all Longhorn.
     
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  3. DFW_Horn

    DFW_Horn 2,500+ Posts

    We can only hope an A&M grad has as much success at Texas as a sooner (DKR) or Baylor grad (Conradt).
     
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  4. GameOfHorns

    GameOfHorns 250+ Posts

    As a coach, I don’t think I would have fared well coaching for other than, or against, my alma mater.
     
    Last edited: May 1, 2020
  5. HnH

    HnH 100+ Posts

     
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  6. GameOfHorns

    GameOfHorns 250+ Posts

    I think he’s all in!
     
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  7. ViperHorn

    ViperHorn 10,000+ Posts

    No, it is his acknowledgment of aggy's football greatness.
     
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  8. DFW_Horn

    DFW_Horn 2,500+ Posts

    Craig’s looking a bit scruffy...

     
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  9. racerx5908

    racerx5908 2,500+ Posts

    Podcast with Vic:
    https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=a...Ewjxt9iN5abpAhVFnq0KHYJMAMkQieUEegQICRAE&ep=6
    What's of interest in here is:
    1) He hasn't gotten a house in Austin yet, wife has to go house-hunting
    2) We know he was born in Austin, seems because dad was a bird-colonel, probably Bergstrom AFB
    3) Discusses being spanked by UConn and then playing them the next year
    4) Discusses Mulkey and his history with her - he ain't taking none of her guff
     
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  10. TempestHorn

    TempestHorn 500+ Posts

    Yeah in the Craig Way interview he talked about someone buying out from under his wife. That was surprising to hear. My friend is a real estate agent and he's getting no income right now at all and published real estate transactions in Austin over the last month and it's so pedestrian. Really shocked they'd be in a competitive situation.
     
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  11. TempestHorn

    TempestHorn 500+ Posts



    Andrea Lloyd interviews Jody and Vic. While they wait for Vic to show, Jody makes some very good points about next fall and football. I know a lot of you on here care about this one, he says practices will be open to the fans. Apparently, Johnnie Harris has found a house but Vic and his wife still have not.
     
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  12. 32horn

    32horn < 25 Posts

    Amazing interview and visit..I welcome the new staff n coach as I was there for Coach Conradts first game and was at the National Championship in Lexington and the shot in Bowling Green which lasted 5 seconds and kept us out of the final four in Austin the year before.... .Small plane rides to Fayetteville to Barnhill and so much more..A new era Longhorn Nation can be proud of .Hook Em
     
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    Last edited: May 12, 2020
  13. brnkj

    brnkj 2,500+ Posts

    I was especially happy to see Coach JC chat back and forth, and can appreciate the
    sincerity in her excitement about Coach Vic's hire. I agree that it's always great for a woman to get opportunities because, let's face it, this world is not fair and equal. Having said that CdC, CP, JC, Kathy, and whomever else was involved HIT IT OUT OF THE PARK by getting the best available candidate and bringing in Vic and his staff. IMO when you think of his Texas ties, personality, coaching style, knowledge of the history of the UT program and his relationship with JC... I don't think there could have been a better hire even if we would've been able to hand pick from any coach in the nation.
     
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  14. racerx5908

    racerx5908 2,500+ Posts

  15. DFW_Horn

    DFW_Horn 2,500+ Posts

    Not sure if this need content but just in case...

    EDIT: Looks like a compilation of previous interviews.

     
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    Last edited: May 21, 2020
  16. DFW_Horn

    DFW_Horn 2,500+ Posts

    Vic goes deep into his coaching history and the challenges of starting his career for anyone interested.

     
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  17. Jacob Johnson

    Jacob Johnson 2,500+ Posts

     
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  18. DFW_Horn

    DFW_Horn 2,500+ Posts

    I’ll try to post a reminder when it’s closer to air/release date. Should be some great stories...

    Vic, Jody, Gary Blair, Marsha Sharp and Mulkey.

     
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  19. DFW_Horn

    DFW_Horn 2,500+ Posts

    Not an interview or article...just good time on the lake on Blair’s birthday.

     
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  20. DFW_Horn

    DFW_Horn 2,500+ Posts

    I knew his son had been seriously injured - had no idea it was this severe.

     
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  21. DFW_Horn

    DFW_Horn 2,500+ Posts

    From the Athletic a couple of days ago. Some of it has been covered in other articles/interviews but just in case anyone's interested...

    Deep in the heart: Texas’ Vic Schaefer embraces the magnitude of his homecoming
    It’s an early October morning, not long after the withered, gnarled branches of the nearby Muster Oak have begun genuflecting in the warmth of the rising autumn sun, and Vic Schaefer is right where he wants to be.

    He knows his visits to this region of Texas have been too infrequent during the previous eight years, and though nothing can recapture time, this is part of his apology. Schaefer has brought silk flowers, a pair of American flags and his memories, and as he lays them all in front of the washed marble engraved with his parents’ names, he remembers it’s the things he holds on to the hardest that will persevere the longest.

    Schaefer, you see, has Texas deep in his heart — a love so robust and unyielding that it has become paramount to who he is. The affection borne out by Charles and Dot to their only son, and a lifetime spent reciprocating, formed the cornerstone of his introduction in April as the women’s basketball coach at the University of Texas.

    Six months later, amid a few tender moments at the cemetery in La Grange, Schaefer is putting it all together.

    This is home.

    Schaefer was rushing out the door, resume in hand. He needed to get to Huntsville, 78 miles north, and quickly.

    It was spring 1990. Schaefer left Sam Houston State a few months earlier after two seasons as a men’s basketball graduate assistant, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to go back. The sudden death in December of his father, a civil engineer who spent 32 years in the Army and retired as a colonel, tore a hole in the family. To keep an eye on his lonesome mother, Schaefer returned to Milby High School as a world history teacher and assistant boys basketball coach.

    For a week, he had been politely declining requests to interview for the vacant women’s basketball head-coaching job at Sam Houston State. But at 29, he knew that if he was going to continue advancing his coaching career, the university was offering something many others weren’t: Division I experience, if in name only.

    So, with a nudge from his head coach, Boyce Honea, who promised to cover Schaefer’s classes, Schaefer rushed up Interstate 45, hoping to reach campus by the noon deadline. He had the job days later, but he didn’t know what else he was getting.

    Schaefer’s early days were rough. His predecessor, Debbie Adams, wore down under the stress of the job and lasted only one season. His budget of $20,574 had to cover team meals, travel, equipment, referees’ fees and recruiting expenses. He had no full-time assistant coaches. He was driving his players to games in a conversion van. He washed uniforms after returning home. He was making $30,000 a year, and that was before taxes and paying for whatever incidentals the university wouldn’t cover.

    “Some of the Southland opportunities, you better be on top of your game and (think), ‘Let’s go get it,'” says Royce Chadwick, the women’s basketball coach at Sam Houston State when Schaefer was a graduate assistant and now in the same role at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. “You did everything yourself, and I think it can overwhelm you if you’re not used to doing it.”

    Progress took time. Schaefer finished 11-16 in his first season, when his initial recruiting class consisted of players he only knew through the Houston Chronicle. The shine didn’t last long; the Bearkats went 9-18 the next season and were 6-20 in 1992-93 despite winning three of their first five, testing Schaefer’s resolve.

    “The fact of the matter is, I probably wasn’t ready for that job when I got it,” Schaefer says.

    Things got better. Sam Houston State improved in each of the next three seasons, capped by an 18-10 record in 1995-96 that included the program’s first conference tournament win in 13 years and Schaefer’s selection as Southland Coach of the Year. And while Schaefer believed in the future, the present was staring him in the face. He was 35. He had twins who were a few months old. And former conference foe Gary Blair was on the phone, offering him double his current salary to be his assistant at Arkansas, where his wife, Holly, also a former women’s basketball assistant coach, grew up.

    It wasn’t easy, but it was clear. For the first time in his life, Schaefer left Texas.

    Schaefer was just a kindergartner at Mount Olive Lutheran Church School in 1966 when Christmas break arrived and his teacher began maternity leave. Her replacement? Schaefer’s sister, now Elaine Baldwin, who had been studying elementary education at the University of Houston. She drove to the family home each morning, picked Schaefer up and took him to class.

    “He called me ‘sister’ all the time,” Baldwin says. “Then the other kids would call me ‘sister,’ and I was thinking they were all thinking I was a nun in the Catholic church. But he was good. We did OK. Once in a while, he’d act up a little bit, so I’d tell my daddy and my daddy would get onto him.”

    Fourteen years older than Schaefer, Baldwin was ecstatic to find out she’d finally have a younger brother. Schaefer took his first steps when she coaxed him to walk down the hallway toward her. She taught him once more, in eighth-grade art class in 1975. And when he was old enough to drive, she gave him a coveted hand-me-down — her bright orange 1967 Ford Mustang.

    Years later, Baldwin’s husband, Billy, who died of cancer in 2010, and one of Billy’s cousins, Jimmy, a pilot for Continental, purchased a small airplane. Billy had his pilot’s license — “but nobody wanted to fly with him,” Baldwin says, laughing — so when Jimmy was off from work, the three would fly to watch Schaefer coach and sometimes Schaefer’s mother would join them.

    Baldwin was planning to attend Texas’ season opener Wednesday against SMU, then celebrate Thanksgiving with her brother and his family for the first time since he left for Mississippi State. They scuttled those plans because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but that means she will hold onto something of Schaefer’s for even longer: his kindergarten diploma, signed by her.

    Sometimes, the simple life seems so much more appealing.

    Schaefer had been one of Blair’s assistant coaches, first at Arkansas and then at his alma mater, Texas A&M, for more than a decade when he called his longtime friend and confidant Dean Lewis. The two spoke often about their lives and careers, and it was time for another chat: Schaefer had learned from former Texas A&M football coach Dennis Franchione, then at Texas State, about an opportunity to be the head women’s basketball coach there.

    “I just want to get back to a head job,” Schaefer told Lewis. “I think I might just want to go back and get out of this meat grinder that I’m in. What do you think?”

    Lewis, the former dean of the business school at Sam Houston State, had known Schaefer since he was a faculty advisor two decades earlier. He knew how much Schaefer wanted to test himself again, to have full responsibility at a Texas school, but he didn’t like the idea.

    “It’d just be a bad decision professionally and it would be bad for you to somewhat give up at a higher level and say, ‘I’ll just go back to mid-minor coaching,'” Lewis told him. “You’ll always be a mid-minor coach. That’s not what you want. That’s not why you sacrificed all of these years and worked as hard as you have.”

    Lewis was proven right.

    “I said, ‘I think that’d be a terrible professional decision. Stay where you are. You keep your head down, you stay in the major programs and things will work out,'” Lewis says, recalling the conversation.

    “Fortunately, it did.”

    Schaefer loves line dancing. His sister loves line dancing. And his parents loved line dancing, too. They danced a lot.

    “It is true,” his sister says. “He can sing, too. He sang in the choir when he was younger, and yeah, he can sing and he’s a good dancer. He likes to dance. He got that from me.”

    Baldwin teases that when her brother was younger, he “dated I don’t know how many girls — hundreds of them, probably — but they would always go dancing.”

    “I can cut a rug,” Schaefer boasts. “Nobody knows that, but I can boot-scoot with the best of ’em. That was probably one of my distractions growing up in college. I really enjoyed that part. I’ve got a couple good pairs of boots and jeans. Not many people know about that.”

    It had been the most challenging nine months of Schaefer’s life, and as the confetti fell and his players celebrated, he was kneeling on the hardwood, head tilted skyward, his hands outstretched.

    Nine months earlier, in July 2010, Schaefer was in Cincinnati when he received a phone call. His son, Logan, had been in a wakeboarding accident and was unconscious and unresponsive. He underwent surgery to relieve pressure caused by bleeding on his brain. He spent 11 days in intensive care.

    For 39 days, until Logan walked out of a Houston hospital, Schaefer never left his son’s side. He helped him shower. He helped him eat.

    “A lot of people are not equipped to do that, especially if it’s your kids,” says former Texas A&M and Mississippi State football coach Jackie Sherrill, a friend of Schaefer’s who sent him emails each night offering support and begging him to remember to take care of himself. “That just showed me how strong inside he was and also how strong his belief and faith was.”

    Schaefer rejoined the coaching staff at Texas A&M in mid-August. The Aggies won 18 of their first 19 games, lost in the Big 12 title game and beat two No. 1 seeds in the NCAA Tournament, claiming their first national championship by defeating Notre Dame.

    As Schaefer looked toward the heavens, he was thankful, especially for his son.

    “He’s my walking, talking miracle,” Schaefer says, “so if I ever have a bad game or a bad day, or I get my butt handed to me, I just go pick up the phone and call him and his voice brings me back to reality real quick.”

    Later, when Schaefer ordered his championship ring, he asked for an engraving inside the band: “Life-flighted to the Final Four.”

    Joe Moorhead had been to plenty of athletic department fundraisers, but what he saw at an event in spring 2018 caught his attention.

    Two boosters were bidding to serve as Schaefer’s all-access guest coach for a weekend. The winner would attend meetings and practices, receive an autographed basketball, go into the locker room and sit behind the bench for a game.

    The money helped fund equine therapy for veterans recovering from traumatic brain injuries. The amount was climbing. Neither supporter was willing to back down. Bidding surpassed $10,000.

    Schaefer interrupted. “I’ll give it to both of you if you’ll each give us $10,000,” he told them. They agreed. He has begun routinely offering the package at fundraising events.

    “When he’s on the court, it’s all business,” says Moorhead, who spent the last two seasons as Mississippi State’s football coach and is now Oregon’s offensive coordinator. “When he’s off the court, you can see why he’s done well with recruiting. He’s just kind of got that Southern, genteel, laid-back demeanor that I would imagine appeals not only to the players but to the parents as well.”

    Moorhead is from Pittsburgh, where his father spent three decades working in a steel mill. Schaefer used his 5100M utility tractor in a recent commercial for a John Deere dealership in Mississippi.

    “What I learned from Vic is that he’s kind of a country guy,” Moorhead says. “He taught me what ‘shocking a lake’ means. Have you ever heard of that? Neither did I. It’s a way that you find out how many fish are in the lake that you’re fishing in. You can ask him about it. I didn’t know about it. I told him, ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.’ He taught me some good country stuff that I wouldn’t have known otherwise.”

    The biggest problem is that wearing a face mask prevents Schaefer’s players from seeing him smile.

    “It’s just been such a tremendous challenge for us,” Schaefer says, adjusting to his new job amid the pandemic. “We’re people people. We’re all about relationships.”

    Schaefer occasionally took his Sam Houston State players to Black-eyed Pea, a Southern homestyle restaurant chain. But with a limited budget, he warned them they couldn’t order from the more expensive right side of the menu. While at Mississippi State, Schaefer and his assistants hosted cookouts at their homes, Schaefer delighting the crowd with barbecued brisket and associate head coach Johnnie Harris with shrimp mac and cheese.

    Circumstances have changed over the years, but at Texas, standards haven’t. Shortly after Jody Conradt was hired as women’s basketball coach in 1976, she was given an inauspicious bit of advice from legendary football coach Darrell Royal. “You only have to be No. 1 — or better,” Royal told her.

    Conradt claimed a national championship in 1986 and won three-quarters of her games upon her retirement in 2007. As part of the committee that targeted Schaefer during the hiring process, Conradt knows what he’s up against. Baylor, an also-ran while she coached, is now a national power. Texas A&M still poses a threat. Texas, in many ways, is the third-best program in the state.
     
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  22. DFW_Horn

    DFW_Horn 2,500+ Posts

    ...Cont...

    “The expectations are high,” Conradt says. “I think most coaches who have an opportunity to coach here, I think they feel that way because the standards are high. I think Vic is aware of that. He couldn’t have grown up in this state without realizing that Texas has high expectations. That makes everybody’s job more difficult, but he is certainly up to the challenge and up to the task.”

    Schaefer inherits a team that has the potential No. 1 pick in the WNBA Draft in Charli Collier, a brilliant graduate transfer at point guard in Kyra Lambert and a determined cast of underclassmen led by Celeste Taylor. Still, all roads go through Waco. When Baylor coach Kim Mulkey, who has known Schaefer for decades, called to congratulate him in the spring, she emphasized that she didn’t want them to be perceived as adversaries.

    “Vic is going to be very good at Texas,” says Blair, the A&M coach. “That is going to be his retirement job — and he’s not anywhere close to retiring. He’s going to get it done, just like we got it done here and he got it done at Mississippi State.”

    In La Grange, Schaefer says goodbye to his parents, leaves the cemetery and drives past the Oak Motel, a local landmark named for the celebrated tree two blocks away where soldiers gathered before heading off to war. His grandmother Louise used to live next to the motel, and occasionally, when he’d visit on weekends, he’d be spoiled with a trip to the Bon Ton Restaurant, where he’d eat breakfast, spin in circles on the chrome bar stools and feel like a big deal for leaving a 35-cent tip.

    Some things are different, but some things stay the same. The Bon Ton was sold in 1985, and its owners, the Weikels, cousins of Schaefer’s, opened a bakery off Highway 71 not long after. So Schaefer pops in, asks for some kolaches, a cherry cream pie and homemade bread, then heads west, beginning the hour-long trek back to Austin.

    And so it is that the son of Charles and Dot and of the Lone Star State, born at the old Brackenridge Hospital on the southern edge of the university’s campus, reacquaints himself with what he knew all those years ago.

    He is home.
     
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  23. Ellis21d

    Ellis21d JediHorn

    Dang that was a good story!
     
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  24. Jacob Johnson

    Jacob Johnson 2,500+ Posts


    Main key points:

    1. Vic and Ebo are "frustrated" about everyone else getting an immediate eligibility waiver and Ebo not getting one. Also noted this is there last try so I assume she has been denied before and some appeals have been made.

    2. Lambert is back at practice and Vic does not expect her to play tomorrow but she will get a few minutes on Wednesday just to prepare her for next Sunday vs A&M.
     
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  25. Jacob Johnson

    Jacob Johnson 2,500+ Posts


    Most valuable points....

    1. Lambert will see playing time on Wednesday just too "get her feet wet"

    2. CDC and the Texas administration have been fighting tooth and nail to get Ebo an immediate waiver. In summary it basically comes down to numbers due to covid and putting the players in a healthy situation which I completed agree with. Vic said Texas might hear something by the end of the week on Ebo's waiver.
    ( I hope we hear something before the A&M game)

    3. Vic said if an opponent happens to cancel due to covid, he will immediately begin to look for a team to replace the game instead of just not playing. Which I absolutely love because we need to play as much as possible since we are a very new team.

    *South Florida is the first team on his list that he will call for a makeup game*

    Another note is that the big 12 put out something to the ncaa to pass the one time transfer rule right now so teams who get hit by covid can have enough players to play. Since they are granting almost everyone waivers, they might as well just pass the rule and save everyone the trouble.
     
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    Last edited: Dec 1, 2020
  26. DFW_Horn

    DFW_Horn 2,500+ Posts

    For those of you who listen to podcasts...

     
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  27. Jacob Johnson

    Jacob Johnson 2,500+ Posts


    No key points really. Its just everything that is obviously.

    One thing coach said was that "a couple were not very coachable tonight" I think we can all agree and make the correct assumption that he was speaking about Collier and Taylor.
     
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  28. hoopsalot

    hoopsalot 500+ Posts

    He seemed most critical of guard play though he praised Ashley C and Joanne.
     
  29. loyallonghorn

    loyallonghorn 500+ Posts

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