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Rori Harmon leaned over near midcourt, dribbling the ball below her knees as Vic Schaefer rested on one knee near the bench. After forcing TCU deep into its own shot clock throughout the night, she waited out her own in what stood as her only turnover of the day. She dropped her head again in a rare selfish moment for the facilitation-first point guard.
The redshirt senior thought during those final seconds of all she had been through to feel the confetti fall on her. In the aftermath of celebrations and net-cutting, Schaefer thought of all she put TCU through to bring Texas back to its spot as one of the best teams in the nation.
“That to me is vintage Rori,” Schaefer said. “She embraces the defensive challenge. She loves it. She eats it for breakfast. She was accountable today in huddles. We had a couple of empty possessions where I thought we might have been able to do something different, and she was like, ‘Coach, it’s me, I got it.’”
It’s a luxury for both player and coach that Harmon can do any of those things this deep into Texas’ season. For most of the past 15 months, the point guard served as Schaefer’s bench coach rather than an extension of him on the court. Already stacked with accolades, Harmon was on the rise as one of the country’s best two-way players with Texas in position to snap its Final Four streak when she tore her right ACL in December 2023.
The arrival was merely delayed. Harmon, after returning from the injury earlier than expected, led the program to its first Final Four since 2003 and cut down her first Elite Eight net after exiting in the regional final twice previously.
“To see us get to the Final Four after recovering and coming back from my ACL injury in 10 months, I thought it was an amazing thing and I was just really proud of myself in that moment,” Harmon said.
Harmon, a WNBA prospect who could stay an extra year in college, is taking her rightful place in this Final Four alongside household names Paige Bueckers, Azzi Fudd, Lauren Betts and teammate Madison Booker as one of the best players in the country despite the road bump.
Rori Harmon and the Texas Longhorns take on South Carolina for the fourth time this season on Friday. (Alex Slitz/Getty Images)
Alex Slitz via Getty Images
Harmon ultimately decided to stay inside her home state of Texas, choosing between Baylor, the state’s three-time title-winning juggernaut led at the time by Kim Mulkey, and Texas, the prestigious program that hadn’t broken through to a Final Four in decades. On April 24, 2020, she announced her commitment to the Longhorns.
“It really came down to having a really tight relationship with my coaches and them being able to develop me into a better player to make it to the WNBA Draft,” the 2021 Texas Gatorade Player of the Year said in a video posted to social media.
The decision came less than three weeks after the Longhorns hired Schaefer, who had been recruiting Harmon heavily at Mississippi State before he took the Texas job. He saw a bigger opportunity to sign her at Texas since the university was 2½ hours from her hometown in Houston.
“In my mind, she was one of the best in the country, if not the best,” Schaefer said of Harmon in a 2021 point guard class that included South Carolina’s Raven Johnson and Notre Dame’s Olivia Miles.
Elena Lovato, then an assistant and recruiting coordinator who came with Schaefer from Mississippi State, insisted the 2021 Texas Gatorade Player of the Year would be their “next great point guard.” But Texas sports performance coach Zack Zillner didn’t see it at first.
“She was really undersized, a guard like 120 pounds, [a] little kid,” Zillner told Yahoo Sports. “She’s going to be our next great point guard? I was like, 'I've seen a lot of good point guards, and we’ll see.'"
When he saw her work on the court after arriving on campus, he noticed her quickness, but more obvious was her competitive spirit. She “hated losing more than anything,” he said. He was the same way, and they consistently challenged each other.
“No matter what game we were playing, she wanted to win and wanted to win convincingly,” Zillner said. “I think that competitive nature, you can win a lot of games with that.”
Her tenacity on both ends led the program to its first Big 12 tournament title (2022) and its first share of a regular-season title (2023) since the 2003 championship team.
In her first season, she set the Texas freshman record for assists (180), came second in steals (86), earned Big 12 Freshman of the Year, Most Outstanding Player in the Big 12 tournament, and All-Big 12 honors. She also earned all-tournament team honors for the Spokane region and All-American honorable mention by the Associated Press and Women’s Basketball Coaches Association. She was the first freshman in school history to earn the honor from either.
As a sophomore, she earned Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year and moved up to conference first-team honors while earning two more All-America honorable mention nods. Her 7.4 assists per game set the program record and she joined Iowa’s Caitlin Clark as the only players to average at least 11 points, seven assists and five rebounds per game. Also like Clark, she joined the collegiate triple-double club in a win over LSU.
“Boy, she's not disappointed a lick,” Schaefer said.
Her junior campaign was the true breakout. She led the country in assist-to-turnover ratio (93 assists, 14 turnovers) through 12 games and rose as a national player of the year contender following an upset win over UConn. The numbers across the board were career-bests.
“I think she’s the best player we’ve played against so far this year, by far, at both ends,” UConn head coach Geno Auriemma said at the time.
A few weeks later, she tore the ACL in her right knee during a shootaround ahead of a non-conference game against Jackson State. She said she didn’t want to see anything about basketball or go to practice in the days afterward.
“Eventually, you get out of your own funk and stop being so selfish and into yourself,” Harmon said last week.
That’s when she called a meeting with the coaches. She wanted their best so she could reach hers again.
The first days and weeks after ACL surgery are focused on minimal movement and pain management. It’s a mostly sedentary stretch for a person used to multiple workouts or practices a day.
“It’s terrible. It’s awful,” Harmon said. “You can’t even go to the restroom by yourself.”
The mental aspect was the toughest, Harmon said, grading it a 10 compared to the two of physically returning. Zillner, who tore his Achilles two years ago, could relate, even if it wasn’t with professional aspirations. They would still meet during that first week post-op and talk about her headspace.
“Once you see their perspective on life and where they think this is going or where they want this to go, it helps you kind of steer the rest of the rehab process,” Zillner said.
Harmon had already told them she wanted to go as hard at her rehab as she does guarding opponents the length of the court. When she told Zillner in their first-ever meeting she wanted to go pro, Zillner told her the pros he works with come in every day of the week multiple times a day and focus on sleep, hydration, training and nutrition. Having that baseline of work ethic helped after the injury.
“She’s treated her whole career like that,” Zillner said. “She wanted to be pushed more than your normal ACL type rehab and we were all on board. I knew just from working with her in the past that she could handle what it would take to get back to even better than she was before.”
Texas head coach Vic Schaefer initially recruited Rori Harmon when he was at Mississippi State. (Michael Reaves/Getty Images)
Michael Reaves via Getty Images
During her ACL rehab, she came into the training and performance staff multiple times a day to work with Zillner, athletic trainer Cheyanne Goyen and physical therapist Cullen Nigrini. They explained every part of the thought process and timeline. She never came in less than twice a day.
“It’s something [that’s] really beautiful to witness because I’ve never seen somebody that works so hard,” freshman point guard Bryanna Preston said. “Sometimes I’m like, 'Hey, Rori, make sure you’re not over doing it, overworking. Make sure you’re taking that time.' But she’s definitely on top of everything.”
Even when Harmon met certain landmarks of recovery ahead of schedule, the team didn’t automatically clear her. From all their research, they felt the longer they could keep her from playing, the smarter it was for her future.
The day came 10 months after the tear on the shorter end of the typical nine-to-12 months timeframe. Zillner said they decided to clear her based on how she compared to the baseline tests they had from before the injury with one in particular.
“The biggest thing we noticed with her was her inhibition was down as far as being afraid of re-injuring,” Zillner said. “We did a ton of stuff in her rehab process to get used to contact, we’d wrestled, controlled chaos type of stuff.”
Harmon said she is still going through the mental aspect of a return and it’s an injury that sticks with a player for years afterward. Schaefer said he saw only one player work as hard as she did to come back, missing only two-thirds of a season.
“You look at her and her movement, her explosiveness,” Schaefer said. “I said this even before she got hurt, the torque and just the power that she plays with, the change of direction, I'm amazed.”
Her air jumps and practice workload metrics increased before the injury, as did the mile conditioning test Schaefer prizes. She ran her fastest mile in four years.
“I think she was on a mission to prove obviously to others to be back, but I think she wanted to prove to herself that she was going to be a better version,” Zillner said.
A week after the injury, Harmon stood on the sideline with Schaefer during practice. The veteran coach put in three press attacks for freshman Madison Booker, who took over at point guard, ahead of the West Virginia game.
Schaefer recalled Harmon telling him she’d never seen the plays before.
“I said, 'No kidding, we ain’t never done these before,'” Schaefer said. “But I got to put them in for this team because you’re over here with me standing here talking to me about this.”
Texas fared fine in Harmon’s absence, winning the Big 12 tournament title in the program’s final year in the conference, earning a No. 1 NCAA tournament seed and reaching the Elite Eight. It was the program’s third Elite Eight loss in four years.
But now, with Harmon back running the attack and shutting down prolific TCU scorer Hailey Van Lith in the regional final, Texas is in the Final Four.
“She’s a beast,” Zillner said. “She’s our little pit bull.”
Texas has its second-most wins in a season in school history (35) and it shared a piece of the regular-season SEC title with South Carolina. The Longhorns are one of only three teams to defeat the Gamecocks in the previous two seasons and will face the reigning champions for a fourth time on Friday with a spot in the national title game on the line.
It could be Harmon’s final game in a Longhorn jersey. She has an extra COVID year available to her and said during the regional finals she wanted to take time to learn more and converse with family. She has 48 hours after her season ends to declare.
“Right now I’m thinking about winning. I have to,” Harmon said. “It’s hard to think about both, but I have to in a way think about both. When it’s game time, I’m here now, gotta get it done now.”
Harmon is outside of the first-round in most WNBA mock drafts. She could choose to follow the lead of Georgia Amoore, who stayed a fifth year in college to further develop a professional package of skills knowing she’s undersized. If she enters, Harmon has the tenacity and defense to stick on a roster if it’s the right situation.
“She’s a perfect fit as far as a point guard who is all about winning and toughness,” Zillner said. “You see her out there, she does what a lot of people don’t like to do which is play defense at a high level. Just seeing how she is in the locker room and how she brings life to her situation. That’s who I want running my team for sure.”
Whatever she decides, she’ll surely deliver a vintage Rori performance for her team.
Continue reading...
The redshirt senior thought during those final seconds of all she had been through to feel the confetti fall on her. In the aftermath of celebrations and net-cutting, Schaefer thought of all she put TCU through to bring Texas back to its spot as one of the best teams in the nation.
“That to me is vintage Rori,” Schaefer said. “She embraces the defensive challenge. She loves it. She eats it for breakfast. She was accountable today in huddles. We had a couple of empty possessions where I thought we might have been able to do something different, and she was like, ‘Coach, it’s me, I got it.’”
It’s a luxury for both player and coach that Harmon can do any of those things this deep into Texas’ season. For most of the past 15 months, the point guard served as Schaefer’s bench coach rather than an extension of him on the court. Already stacked with accolades, Harmon was on the rise as one of the country’s best two-way players with Texas in position to snap its Final Four streak when she tore her right ACL in December 2023.
The arrival was merely delayed. Harmon, after returning from the injury earlier than expected, led the program to its first Final Four since 2003 and cut down her first Elite Eight net after exiting in the regional final twice previously.
“To see us get to the Final Four after recovering and coming back from my ACL injury in 10 months, I thought it was an amazing thing and I was just really proud of myself in that moment,” Harmon said.
Harmon, a WNBA prospect who could stay an extra year in college, is taking her rightful place in this Final Four alongside household names Paige Bueckers, Azzi Fudd, Lauren Betts and teammate Madison Booker as one of the best players in the country despite the road bump.
You must be registered for see images attach
Rori Harmon and the Texas Longhorns take on South Carolina for the fourth time this season on Friday. (Alex Slitz/Getty Images)
Alex Slitz via Getty Images
Undersized but tenacious: Harmon's rise at Texas
Harmon ultimately decided to stay inside her home state of Texas, choosing between Baylor, the state’s three-time title-winning juggernaut led at the time by Kim Mulkey, and Texas, the prestigious program that hadn’t broken through to a Final Four in decades. On April 24, 2020, she announced her commitment to the Longhorns.
“It really came down to having a really tight relationship with my coaches and them being able to develop me into a better player to make it to the WNBA Draft,” the 2021 Texas Gatorade Player of the Year said in a video posted to social media.
The decision came less than three weeks after the Longhorns hired Schaefer, who had been recruiting Harmon heavily at Mississippi State before he took the Texas job. He saw a bigger opportunity to sign her at Texas since the university was 2½ hours from her hometown in Houston.
“In my mind, she was one of the best in the country, if not the best,” Schaefer said of Harmon in a 2021 point guard class that included South Carolina’s Raven Johnson and Notre Dame’s Olivia Miles.
Elena Lovato, then an assistant and recruiting coordinator who came with Schaefer from Mississippi State, insisted the 2021 Texas Gatorade Player of the Year would be their “next great point guard.” But Texas sports performance coach Zack Zillner didn’t see it at first.
“She was really undersized, a guard like 120 pounds, [a] little kid,” Zillner told Yahoo Sports. “She’s going to be our next great point guard? I was like, 'I've seen a lot of good point guards, and we’ll see.'"
When he saw her work on the court after arriving on campus, he noticed her quickness, but more obvious was her competitive spirit. She “hated losing more than anything,” he said. He was the same way, and they consistently challenged each other.
“No matter what game we were playing, she wanted to win and wanted to win convincingly,” Zillner said. “I think that competitive nature, you can win a lot of games with that.”
Her tenacity on both ends led the program to its first Big 12 tournament title (2022) and its first share of a regular-season title (2023) since the 2003 championship team.
In her first season, she set the Texas freshman record for assists (180), came second in steals (86), earned Big 12 Freshman of the Year, Most Outstanding Player in the Big 12 tournament, and All-Big 12 honors. She also earned all-tournament team honors for the Spokane region and All-American honorable mention by the Associated Press and Women’s Basketball Coaches Association. She was the first freshman in school history to earn the honor from either.
As a sophomore, she earned Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year and moved up to conference first-team honors while earning two more All-America honorable mention nods. Her 7.4 assists per game set the program record and she joined Iowa’s Caitlin Clark as the only players to average at least 11 points, seven assists and five rebounds per game. Also like Clark, she joined the collegiate triple-double club in a win over LSU.
“Boy, she's not disappointed a lick,” Schaefer said.
Her junior campaign was the true breakout. She led the country in assist-to-turnover ratio (93 assists, 14 turnovers) through 12 games and rose as a national player of the year contender following an upset win over UConn. The numbers across the board were career-bests.
“I think she’s the best player we’ve played against so far this year, by far, at both ends,” UConn head coach Geno Auriemma said at the time.
A few weeks later, she tore the ACL in her right knee during a shootaround ahead of a non-conference game against Jackson State. She said she didn’t want to see anything about basketball or go to practice in the days afterward.
“Eventually, you get out of your own funk and stop being so selfish and into yourself,” Harmon said last week.
That’s when she called a meeting with the coaches. She wanted their best so she could reach hers again.
Why mental side of rehab was harder than the physical
The first days and weeks after ACL surgery are focused on minimal movement and pain management. It’s a mostly sedentary stretch for a person used to multiple workouts or practices a day.
“It’s terrible. It’s awful,” Harmon said. “You can’t even go to the restroom by yourself.”
The mental aspect was the toughest, Harmon said, grading it a 10 compared to the two of physically returning. Zillner, who tore his Achilles two years ago, could relate, even if it wasn’t with professional aspirations. They would still meet during that first week post-op and talk about her headspace.
“Once you see their perspective on life and where they think this is going or where they want this to go, it helps you kind of steer the rest of the rehab process,” Zillner said.
Harmon had already told them she wanted to go as hard at her rehab as she does guarding opponents the length of the court. When she told Zillner in their first-ever meeting she wanted to go pro, Zillner told her the pros he works with come in every day of the week multiple times a day and focus on sleep, hydration, training and nutrition. Having that baseline of work ethic helped after the injury.
“She’s treated her whole career like that,” Zillner said. “She wanted to be pushed more than your normal ACL type rehab and we were all on board. I knew just from working with her in the past that she could handle what it would take to get back to even better than she was before.”
You must be registered for see images attach
Texas head coach Vic Schaefer initially recruited Rori Harmon when he was at Mississippi State. (Michael Reaves/Getty Images)
Michael Reaves via Getty Images
During her ACL rehab, she came into the training and performance staff multiple times a day to work with Zillner, athletic trainer Cheyanne Goyen and physical therapist Cullen Nigrini. They explained every part of the thought process and timeline. She never came in less than twice a day.
“It’s something [that’s] really beautiful to witness because I’ve never seen somebody that works so hard,” freshman point guard Bryanna Preston said. “Sometimes I’m like, 'Hey, Rori, make sure you’re not over doing it, overworking. Make sure you’re taking that time.' But she’s definitely on top of everything.”
Even when Harmon met certain landmarks of recovery ahead of schedule, the team didn’t automatically clear her. From all their research, they felt the longer they could keep her from playing, the smarter it was for her future.
The day came 10 months after the tear on the shorter end of the typical nine-to-12 months timeframe. Zillner said they decided to clear her based on how she compared to the baseline tests they had from before the injury with one in particular.
“The biggest thing we noticed with her was her inhibition was down as far as being afraid of re-injuring,” Zillner said. “We did a ton of stuff in her rehab process to get used to contact, we’d wrestled, controlled chaos type of stuff.”
Harmon said she is still going through the mental aspect of a return and it’s an injury that sticks with a player for years afterward. Schaefer said he saw only one player work as hard as she did to come back, missing only two-thirds of a season.
“You look at her and her movement, her explosiveness,” Schaefer said. “I said this even before she got hurt, the torque and just the power that she plays with, the change of direction, I'm amazed.”
Her air jumps and practice workload metrics increased before the injury, as did the mile conditioning test Schaefer prizes. She ran her fastest mile in four years.
“I think she was on a mission to prove obviously to others to be back, but I think she wanted to prove to herself that she was going to be a better version,” Zillner said.
Harmon powers Texas to Final Four: 'She's our little pit bull'
A week after the injury, Harmon stood on the sideline with Schaefer during practice. The veteran coach put in three press attacks for freshman Madison Booker, who took over at point guard, ahead of the West Virginia game.
Schaefer recalled Harmon telling him she’d never seen the plays before.
“I said, 'No kidding, we ain’t never done these before,'” Schaefer said. “But I got to put them in for this team because you’re over here with me standing here talking to me about this.”
Texas fared fine in Harmon’s absence, winning the Big 12 tournament title in the program’s final year in the conference, earning a No. 1 NCAA tournament seed and reaching the Elite Eight. It was the program’s third Elite Eight loss in four years.
But now, with Harmon back running the attack and shutting down prolific TCU scorer Hailey Van Lith in the regional final, Texas is in the Final Four.
“She’s a beast,” Zillner said. “She’s our little pit bull.”
Texas has its second-most wins in a season in school history (35) and it shared a piece of the regular-season SEC title with South Carolina. The Longhorns are one of only three teams to defeat the Gamecocks in the previous two seasons and will face the reigning champions for a fourth time on Friday with a spot in the national title game on the line.
It could be Harmon’s final game in a Longhorn jersey. She has an extra COVID year available to her and said during the regional finals she wanted to take time to learn more and converse with family. She has 48 hours after her season ends to declare.
“Right now I’m thinking about winning. I have to,” Harmon said. “It’s hard to think about both, but I have to in a way think about both. When it’s game time, I’m here now, gotta get it done now.”
Harmon is outside of the first-round in most WNBA mock drafts. She could choose to follow the lead of Georgia Amoore, who stayed a fifth year in college to further develop a professional package of skills knowing she’s undersized. If she enters, Harmon has the tenacity and defense to stick on a roster if it’s the right situation.
“She’s a perfect fit as far as a point guard who is all about winning and toughness,” Zillner said. “You see her out there, she does what a lot of people don’t like to do which is play defense at a high level. Just seeing how she is in the locker room and how she brings life to her situation. That’s who I want running my team for sure.”
Whatever she decides, she’ll surely deliver a vintage Rori performance for her team.
Continue reading...
