On a night when the Texas women’s basketball team could ill afford another loss in its heated chase of front-running Oklahoma, the Longhorns weathered the storm.

Well, the first one, anyway.

Vic Schaefer’s bunch survived a frenzied attempt by Texas Tech to spring the upset, winning a tense 77-72 contest at Moody Center in spite of the Red Raiders’ barrage of a dozen 3-pointers. But this Longhorns team didn’t fare so well in the aftermath when storm No. 2 erupted shortly after the final buzzer.

Simply put, Mount Vicsuveus blew his stack.

But his team didn’t blow a lead, no small point.

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For Schaefer, the blame game starts with a mirror

Texas held off a desperate Texas Tech, which has won just a single road game all season. And it did so by winning the battle in the paint with its superior size and with critical free throws in the second half, hitting 18 in 21 attempts.

“We won the game, but we’re lucky we’re not learning a hard lesson tonight,” Schaefer said. “In my mind, we deserved to lose. We’re out there playing cool, going half-tail. And that’s not how we prepare. It really bothers me. In my mind, we didn’t earn the victory.”

There was more. Lots more.

“Again we were playing cool,” he said. “Cool don’t win. Cool gets you beat and gets the coach fired. It bugs the crap out of me. We were almost entitled. Maybe we were reading our press clippings. We’re this; we’re that. But you (reporters) blame me. I’m responsible for that mess tonight. I’m accountable, and I didn’t have ’em ready.”

OK, Vic, it’s your fault.

'I think he summarized it all'

He’s hardly the first coach to resort to such a motivational ploy because it says here some of the Longhorns actually played pretty well. He just wants better overall. Surprise starter Amina Muhammad made her second start in 11 games and spelled the hobbled Aaliyah Moore (knee) at forward with a career-best 15 rebounds and 16 points. Fellow forward Taylor Jones had a strong showing with a Big 12 game-best 19 points.

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But Texas Tech abused Texas’ guards on the perimeter with strong penetration off the dribble and one 3 after another from Jasmine Shavers, Bailey Maupin and Jada Wynn, who combined for nine of them.

“In the second half, we had so many defensive breakdowns,” Schaefer said. “We got backdoored a ton. Straight-line drives, too. Our inability to defend was really disheartening.”

You go, Vic.

Taylor, any rebuttal?

“I think he summarized it all,” Jones said. “Every game here on out is a championship game. We just have to take it to heart.”

Texas remains in the thick of the Big 12 race

But just as coaches berate referees over a missed call, hoping to get a friendlier whistle the next time, Schaefer put out his scathing review of the team’s next-to-last home game to ensure his troops are all in for the final three games of the regular season.

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The Longhorns trail the Sooners by a game but will play them in Norman with tilts against 3-11 Central Florida and 5-9 BYU sandwiched around that huge confrontation. Texas probably has to sweep all three to win or share the title.

There’s always a method to a coach’s madness, and the grizzled, intense Schaefer made sure his message got across.

He was well aware that a loss could have cost Texas any shot at defending the championship it and Oklahoma shared a year ago. It might have also cost the Longhorns a seed line, come NCAA Tournament, if Tech had won. The Horns were ranked eighth — the last of the No. 2 seeds — by the selection committee in its recent reveal of the top 16 teams.

Drop a home game to a Tech team that is now 5-10 and has lost six straight games, and Texas could have fallen to the 3 seed line, drawn a tougher matchup in round two and damaged its hopes of getting at least to the Sweet 16.

That destination marks the least of Schaefer’s higher ambitions but a necessity if Texas wants to remain in the conversation as one of the best programs in women’s basketball. If Schaefer wants to have Austin look like an attractive destination for future transfers, he can’t get bounced at home in the second round again, as happened at home last March.

Lord knows, he could use some more offensive firepower because he’s got a club with a strong front court and a spectacular freshman point guard, but also one that ranks 313th in the nation in 3s per game. Yes, Texas has size and leads the league in scoring at 83 points a game, but it also ranks last in the Big 12 from long range, averaging only four treys an outing.

Trees over threes. That’s the game plan.

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So Schaefer knows what’s on the line, and he’ll exhaust every option to maximize his team’s potential.

Taking the blame, but also taking the win

In short, he stole a page from the Rick Pitino playbook but saved the most bitter vitriol for himself and his own culpability. Heck, Pitino probably thinks Schaefer went overboard.

Now, the Longhorns boss didn’t single out any of his players as harshly as the St. John’s men’s coach did last week. Pitino unnecessarily ridiculed his players for their slow lateral movement and lack of physicality, then had the insensitivity to claim he didn’t rip them. No, he obliterated them.

Schaefer went off on his No. 5-ranked Longhorns for a variety of offenses. He lit into them for their failure to prepare mentally, their inability to take the 16-11 Red Raiders seriously, their poor on-ball defense. Pretty much the whole kit and caboodle.

After praising Texas Tech for its strong effort and expressing his admiration for coach Krista Gerlich and the job she did Wednesday, Schaefer went ballistic on his players as a group.

And himself.

Mostly himself.

And that’s a good thing to remember in this climate of heightened awareness of mental health issues and player sensitivity.

“They pretty much stuck it to us for 40 minutes,” Schaefer said. “I didn’t do a really good job coaching. I didn’t have them ready to play. They really outplayed us. They out-toughed us in every facet of the game. We’re lucky to get out of here with a win. There’s no other way to explain it.”

Schaefer loves to play the accountability card and made sure the media knew that he was blaming himself more than the players.

“I might owe (athletic director Chris Del Conte) some money,” he added for good measure. “I might not have earned my check tonight.”

So besides the W, some more good could come from Schaefer’s tirade. CDC might be considering passing the hat to raise some extra coin to pay for Steve Sarkisian’s new contract.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Ticked off Longhorn women's coach accepts blame for poor performance