On Wednesday night, Oklahoma secured the Big 12 championship with a 71-70 win at home over Texas.

Had Texas (26-4, 13-4) won, the Red River rivals would have been tied atop the conference standings with one game left in the regular season. Instead, the Sooners (21-7, 15-2) were able to celebrate their first outright title since 2009.

In its second win over Texas this season, Oklahoma got 18 points from Payton Verhulst and 16 points from Lexy Keys. The Sooners grabbed 21 offensive rebounds. Texas lost a nine-point lead in the fourth quarter.

But when UT coach Vic Schaefer met with local reporters two days later, questions weren't asked about defending Verhulst, offensive rebounds or blown leads.

With 15 seconds left in Wednesday's game, Texas point guard Madison Booker was called for a travel after a scramble for a rebound. Replays suggested that Booker had not yet established possession of the basketball when the whistle was blown, however. The call was also made by Roy Gulbeyan, who was on the other side of the court, and not the official who was right by Booker.

The three officials did not discuss the play and it was not reviewed.

When that travel was called, Texas held a 70-68 lead. Without a whistle, Oklahoma would have either had to force a quick turnover or foul. Booker ranks second in the conference with her 88.0 free throw percentage.

Oklahoma instead got the basketball back, and the Sooners did what they needed to do. Oklahoma got two offensive rebounds off misses by Skylar Vann in the waning seconds before Keys knocked down the game-winning 3-pointer with 4.5 seconds left.

A Big 12 spokesperson did not respond to multiple requests from the American-Statesman for either a comment on the traveling call or a clarification from the officials on why a whistle was blown.

But while the Big 12 remained silent on Friday, Schaefer did not. During his media availability, Schaefer confirmed that he had spoken with the conference. He did not divulge the details of that conversation, but he had a few things to say about a call that he instantly objected to.

Said Schaefer: "I think the hardest part of this, to be honest with you, is just having to walk in there and look at my kids. And again, it's life on the road, you're not going to be perfect. We did enough to win the game on our end. You can throw up 21 offensive rebounds in my face all you want. I'm going to tell you that yeah, that might be the case, but we also held them to 35% field goal percentage... so there's going to be more rebounds.

"But I've just never seen that before. I've never seen that happen where you come all the way and it's not your area. Like your eyes shouldn't even be in there. (What) I'm more disappointed in is that there's three of them, that nobody would say, 'Hey, I don't think you got it right and we need to huddle up and get it right.' That's what they're supposed to do. And they didn't do it. I'm more disappointed because I had a lot of respect and I've lost that because there wasn't anybody that did that. There wasn't the one that I thought would do it. So it is what it is. You know I can't really comment on a whole lot of it, but I've just never seen it. It's hard to understand. Make it make sense to me.

"You have to understand how personal what I do. These 15 young ladies are the most important thing in my life. Other than (my daughter) Blair, (my wife) Holly and (my son) Logan, they're the most important thing in my life. I know what those kids do. I know the sacrifice that they make. And it's personal for all of us. It's just so hard to understand how something like that can happen. How do you go look in their face and talk to them? Again, we weren't perfect, but we made enough plays. But that's life on the road. But we played pretty good defensively, held them 35% field goal percentage. It's just so difficult, and it's just the circumstance.

"I've just never seen anything like it. Never. That's what makes it probably more difficult than anything is I've never seen it like that. I've never seen that happen. Never. But again, I'm equally disappointed that there was somebody else that could have stepped up and said 'Hey, we might need to talk this over, make sure this is clear.' Didn't happen. I'm equally disappointed in that.''

Texas will attempt to regroup on Saturday night in its regular-season finale against BYU. Texas is currently ranked third in both the Associated Poll and USA Today coaches poll, and the Longhorns were listed sixth in the rankings released on Thursday by the NCAA Tournament's selection committee.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas basketball coach Vic Schaefer objects to referee's travel call