As March Madness rapidly approaches at this point in the season, games start to take on a new level of meaning and importance towards seeding for the tournament. If Thursday night was any indication of what lies ahead, we are surely in for a treat this year.
We start this week’s edition of Swish Happens Here in the Lone Star State, where No. 17 TCU defeated No. 12 Baylor rather handily, 83-67. The final score is a bit misleading, as the Horned Frogs led through 97 percent of the game and led by as much as 21. TCU scored 52 points solely off of three-pointers, thanks to star transfer Olivia Miles, who dropped a career-high 40 points on the Bears. Miles scored 23 of TCU’s 25 points in the third quarter alone. Of the 15 made threes for the Horned Frogs, she was responsible for 10, netting seven in the third. Marta Suarez matched her career-high with 27 points. The duo combined matched Baylor’s offensive output.
OLIVIA MILES TONIGHT 🔥🔥
• 40 POINTS
• 6 REBOUNDS
• 10/20 3PM (!!!)
• 13/28 FG
• 38 MINUTES PLAYEDpic.twitter.com/Oagv7hW8Lb— Women’s Hoops Network (@WomensHoops_USA) February 13, 2026
In the second half, Miles saw little to no adjustment from Baylor’s defense, whether it doubled her or used a more exotic approach off the ball. With a track record as one of the best scoring guards in the country, it’s fair to say she took it personally. After the game, Baylor head coach Nicki Collen was asked about her strategy by local reporters.
“I thought in the first half we wanted to make her a scorer,” said Collen. “They’re usually at their best when she’s spraying it around, and everybody’s involved, and everybody’s getting to touch the ball and make shots. We definitely had the mentality to be okay with her taking some shots. I thought it worked in the first half. I thought that she was inefficient in the first half.”
Collen later admitted that her decision wasn’t a great one.
“I think it was a bad decision. I think we made adjustments, but I’m not sure if we made them soon enough.”
It’s been quite the week for coaches in postgame press conferences. After a home loss to Mississippi State and a blowout loss to UConn in Storrs, No. 22 Tennessee suffered the worst loss in program history on Sunday at the hands of No. 3 South Carolina, 93-50. After the loss to the Gamecocks, Lady Vols coach Kim Caldwell told reporters that her team had a “lot of quit”.
“A lot of quit in us tonight,” said Caldwell. “And that’s been something consistent with our team, is we’re not comfortable when things don’t go our way. And I have a team that just quit on you, and you can’t do that in big games. You can’t do that anywhere in the SEC, but you certainly can’t do that at a program like this.”
With an inexperienced roster featuring five freshmen, Caldwell called for the bus that brought her players to the game and then threw them under it, saying they didn’t have leadership on the roster.
“We don’t have the leadership we need, player-wise,” she said.
The Lady Vols responded with a 98-53 drubbing of Missouri in former coach Kellie Harper’s return to Rocky Top last night, but grilling your team without actual players present in the room sends the wrong message in Caldwell’s second season leading the program. Later in the press conference, Caldwell admitted that it’s her responsibility to mold her team into the leaders she envisions, and that she hasn’t been succeeding in doing so this year.
“It’s my job to raise them as leaders and have those conversations,” Caldwell said. “And, well, I don’t think that I’ve been doing a very good job at that.”
The postgame telenovela theme continued this week with Texas Longhorns coach Vic Shaefer after an 86-70 loss to No. 5 Vanderbilt last night. Following the game, Schaefer let his thoughts be known.
“I’ve had my butt beat before when you’ve done it as long as I have. It’s not the first time. It’s the first time at Texas, I feel like, where my team was out-topped; the other team played harder. And just quite frankly, we had no heart,” Schaefer told reporters.
“We have no heart,” Schaefer said. “We’re not tough. It’s probably the softest team I’ve had in years. You wanna 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.”
Later in the press conference, Schaefer waxed poetically about the current state of college sports and stated that “effort, energy, and focus used to come with a scholarship, but no longer exist because it “comes with hundreds of thousands of dollars.” It was pretty odd to hear this mentioned in the same breath as his team’s effort, but I doubt he will face a similar reaction to ridiculing players as Tennessee’s Caldwell for obvious reasons.
No. 3 South Carolina @ No. 6 LSU – The game of the week is here, and for many, it’s been circled since schedules were released. On paper, this is a top-ten matchup featuring several WNBA prospects across the board, specifically in Flau’jae Johnson, Raven Johnson, and Ta’Niya Latson. In the past few seasons, this rivalry has been one of the best in the country by far, no matter who’s on either roster, with a slew of players advancing to the W. This is also the first time that LSU’s MiLaysia Fulwiley will face her old team after transferring in the offseason.
No. 4 Texas @ No. 22 Tennessee – After berating their teams to reporters this week, the Longhorns and Lady Vols face off in Knoxville as both teams attempt to right their respective ships. Texas lost two straight back in January to South Carolina and LSU. This was the first time this has occurred since 2022. Considering the circumstances, it’s hard to see them repeating this. It will be interesting to see how Caldwell’s fast-paced, hockey-style lineup change method works against a Texas press attack that has dominated the best squads in the country. Caldwell runs a similar method, but lacks the size in personnel to do it effectively with consistency.
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Born and raised in Chicago, Christan Braswell is a women’s sports journalist with a focus on the WNBA and women’s college basketball. He’s an avid fan of elevator screens and stuffed-crust pizza. Outside of sports, he’s an avid cook and lover of the great outdoors.
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