I lost count of how many times Wednesday night Vic Schaefer said his team didn’t play hard enough on defense against Red River rival Oklahoma.

And the Texas women's basketball coach still didn’t say it enough.

Not nearly enough.

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“I watched it all night,” Schaefer said. “It’s a matter of playing hard. I didn’t think we played hard. It was really disheartening for me as a coach. I don’t have teams that don’t play hard, and this team didn’t play hard tonight. I didn’t a very good job of preparing them.”

Schaefer understands No. 10 Texas can’t let up against any opponent in this league, not with Kansas State on a blistering pace atop the Big 12 standings and Rori Harmon, the face of the Texas program, lost for the season with a blown-out knee.

Schaefer built this program on defense. The concepts are relatively simple. Get stops. Create easy scoring opportunities off turnovers. Get more stops.

“We’re picking you up when you hit the city limits, and we will show you the door when you leave,” Schaefer said when he took the job four years ago.

And he meant it, too.

So it came as a real shock that his Longhorns played the role of a defensive sieve in Wednesday’s head shaker of a 91-87 home loss. They dropped to 18-3 overall, but more importantly slipped to fifth place in the league with a third loss, well behind the 8-0 Wildcats and the 6-1 Sooners.

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With a winnable home game coming up against Cincinnati (10-8, 2-5), the Horns have a nice opportunity to bounce back, assuming they won’t be tripping over their collective tongues from the workouts and practices that Schaefer will put them through between now and Saturday's tipoff.

The Horns still have 10 more conference games, but home losses like Wednesday's have conspired to kill any dream they have of winning a regular-season conference title.

What went wrong on Wednesday?

The mood in the Moody was anything but festive postgame. Schaefer — college basketball’s resident country preacher — has watched film of the game a dozen or so times by now, and the players have surely run enough wind sprints to have their great-great-grandkids gasping for breath, and they’re not even born yet.

It was the effort that had Schaefer steaming — worse yet, the lack of effort.

“We played terrible. We played with no juice, no energy and no fight,” he said.

The Sooners took it to Texas from start to finish, outrebounding the bigger team 39-36 and making 10 3-pointers — seven more than the Horns. A program that prides itself on turning over the opponent forced only nine against a team that came in averaging 18. OU's bigs outplayed Texas', and a horrible night on defense ruined a combined 51 points from guards Shay Holle and Madison Booker.

Not one big reason for loss. Lots of them.

The worst part of arguably the worst defensive performance of his four-year tenure was something that doesn’t show up on the stat sheet: want-to.

The Horns played as if the home court guaranteed a win, and while they did cut it to 85-84 in the final minute, they looked nothing like a Schaefer-coached team, particularly on the defensive end, where Oklahoma feasted on deft passes against unsuspecting UT defenders who too often lost sight of the ball — something Schaefer warned them against in preparation for the game — and were beaten for too many layups to count.

It was death by a thousand cuts.

“That team is just like a football quarterback,” Schaefer said. “When they see the back of your jersey, they are going to throw the ball to your person because I’ve watched enough film on them. I’m not a football coach, but it drives me crazy why those DBs never turn around and find the ball.”

The Horns were the ones getting toasted on their home court before fans who tried like hell to lift them, only to see Oklahoma come up with the answer time and time again.

The absence of team leader Harmon and the void it leaves on the defensive end cannot be overstated. With Harmon and Holle — who had a career game offensively with 22 points — Texas had one heck of a defensive 1-2 backcourt punch. But point guard, a spot that was already thin, took a critical hit with Harmon's injury.

Booker is already one of the best scorers in the country, but her career-high 29 points were blunted by too many lapses on the other end.

“We didn’t bring it, but our fans did,” Booker said when asked about the atmosphere surrounding her first Texas-Oklahoma game.

It's gut-check time now for Texas

Schaefer wears his heart on his sleeve when it comes to his expectations, and it’s a huge reasons players want to come here. He pushes them to get better and accepts no excuses. He views the sport as a meritocracy and believes that players who put in the extra work will be rewarded in the end.

I’ve never seen an 18-3 coach so exasperated after a four-point loss, and his lookahead thoughts had a sense of foreboding about them.

“This may be it,” Schaefer said. “This may be the group that we have. In all reality, this may be where we are right now with this group because what you saw tonight … that may be where they’re at right now.”

Here’s what we know: Schaefer won’t quit, and he won’t allow his players to quit.

This is a test of character and mental fortitude. It’s a team missing its toughest player, and that’s the reality.

The Horns have arrived at a crossroads, and their coach is openly questioning their resolve.

"I don't care where I'm coaching," he said. "I don't care if I'm at Timbuktu. You ain't gonna play for me like that. That is not acceptable, and it damn sure ain't acceptable at Texas."

It’s time to buck up and meet the challenge.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas women's basketball team at a crossroads after Oklahoma loss