The University of Texas at Austin Athletics
Tracing the history of the Women's Basketball vs. Texas Tech rivalry
02.13.2018 | Women's Basketball
In the height of the rivalry between Texas and Texas Tech, the two teams combined legendary coaching and top-tier talent in a battle of wills for best in the state
In the height of the rivalry between Texas and Texas Tech, the two teams combined legendary coaching and top-tier talent in a battle of wills for best in the state. Much more than bragging rights were at stake. The stronger of the two often went on to win the conference championship, and twice, a national title. As the Longhorns and Lady Raiders prepare to meet for the 100th time on Wednesday, take a look back at a rivalry that will go down as one of college basketball's greatest.
By: James Rodriguez
Texas Media Relations
For decades, the Texas and Texas Tech women's basketball programs battled for dominance in a state rich with talent.
Fans in Lubbock and Austin packed sold-out arenas from the 1980s to the mid-2000s, reveling in clashes between two legendary coaches and teams that featured the best athletes that Texas had to offer. Each school claimed a national title in the span of less than a decade, taking both programs — and the game of women's college basketball — to unprecedented heights.
Wednesday's matchup at the Erwin Center will mark the 100th meeting between the two storied programs. The Longhorns have faced the Lady Raiders more than any other opponent, amassing a 70-29 record against a team that for many years was their fiercest in-state foe.
Texas has won the last nine meetings against the Lady Raiders, and will look to sweep the season series for the fifth straight year with a win at home. And while it's been years since Texas and Texas Tech competed head-to-head for conference titles, as they did when the rivalry was at its peak, the history between the two teams still simmers. Wednesday, coincidentally, is also Valentine's Day. But current Texas head coach Karen Aston, who was indoctrinated into the rivalry as an assistant coach at Texas from 1998-2006, is confident there will be no love lost between the Lady Raiders and the Longhorns.
"I think that we loved the competition, but there was a big 'I hate you' kind of thing. 'We don't wanna get beat by you,'" Aston said. "There was a love for the competition and a true respect for the coaches of either program and the players had for each other, but you hated losing in Lubbock and I'm sure they hated losing here in Austin."
A rivalry is born
"It's not just about the players wanting to win. It's about the fan bases and how they feel about the opponent. And there was always passion and rivalry with Texas Tech."
The Lady Raiders first appeared on the Longhorns' schedule in the spring of 1977, during Texas head coach Jody Conradt's first year in Austin. Conradt would eventually earn six National Coach of the Year honors and a place in the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame during her 31-year career as head coach at Texas.
The Longhorns won 89-54 in that first meeting in Austin, an auspicious start to the rivalry. The next year, the Longhorns finished the season ranked 15th in the AP poll, marking the beginning of a rapid ascent to college basketball's elite ranks that would culminate with a national championship in 1986.
In 1982, Marsha Sharp assumed the head coaching role at Texas Tech. It was the start of a 24-year career at the helm in Lubbock, one that would eventually earn her a spot alongside Conradt in the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame. With her West Texas roots, Sharp understood the strong connection between Lubbock and the university. And if she ever needed a model of excellence in women's basketball, all she had to do was look six hours down the road at the program that Conradt was building in Austin.
"We knew what the standard was," Sharp said. "They set a standard for us that we knew what we had to do to be good. Every time we played them, we knew what type of an athlete and what kind of a program we wanted to run. And we sort of modeled what we tried to do at Tech after them."
The early years of the rivalry were mostly one-sided affairs. The Longhorns bested the Lady Raiders in their first 37 meetings, from 1977 to 1991. The NCAA added women's college basketball in 1982, and Texas Tech joined Texas in the Southwest Conference, beginning a long tradition of conference rivalry between the two schools. Often, the schools faced each other three times in a season — twice during conference play, and once in the conference tournament, usually to decide the championship. The Longhorns claimed the conference title for the first eight years of its existence, leaving second or third place to Texas Tech.
"The players were mostly from the state of Texas, and all of that really played into huge crowds and involvement by the fans, and that always makes for an exciting game and an exciting rivalry," Conradt said. "That's what it's about. It's not just about the players wanting to win. It's about the fan bases and how they feel about the opponent. And there was always passion and rivalry with Texas Tech."
The lopsided records belied the fact that something was brewing in Lubbock. In the eighties and nineties, West Texas was a hotbed for high school women's basketball. Texas and Texas Tech vied annually for the talents of the state's top players from the area. When the dust settled after signing day, each team was made up of players who had grown up playing with or against each other.
"I think that sort of fostered the rivalry for a little bit," Aston said. "For me as an assistant, I recruited some of those players. They were all in the state of Texas, and it was brutal. The rivalry was brutal, the competition was brutal. They all played against each other in high school. I think the thing I relished the most about being a part of that at that time was just that it was a respected rivalry, and when I say that, that's from the player perspective. They really, really loved playing against each other."
When Texas Tech picked up its first victory against Texas — a hotly contested, 63-61 win in the final of the Southwest Conference tournament in 1991 — the tide had turned. The Lady Raiders beat Texas to win the conference tournament the next year, and again in 1993.
That year, Texas Tech, led by phenom Sheryl Swoopes, shocked the country with an improbable NCAA tournament run to its first national title. The team returned from the championship game in Atlanta to find a city that had gone certifiably basketball crazy. That championship, which remains the only national championship won by any Texas Tech athletics program, cemented Texas Tech as a team to watch in women's basketball, and only added fuel to the intra-state rivalry.
"There's nothing that means more to a program than being the best in the country in your sport," Sharp said. "It takes you to an entirely different level and raises the expectations of everyone, and certainly is a point of pride for your community. I think it grew the game in West Texas even more."
The Lady Raiders went on to dominate the final years of the Southwest Conference, capturing at least a share of the last five conference titles. Texas and Texas Tech joined the Big 12 in 1996, and continued to duel into the new millenium. Texas Tech took the Longhorns to two double overtime games at the Erwin Center between 2000 and 2002. Of the top ten all-time crowds for women's basketball at the Erwin Center, four were for games against Texas Tech between 1994 and 2004.
The rivalry also became famous for pitting two individual giants in women's basketball against each other — legendary head coaches Conradt and Sharp. Both had a national championship under their belts, and both built their programs from the ground up into national powerhouses.
Kathy Harston served as an assistant coach under Conradt from 1989-2007, witnessing many of the standoffs between Conradt and Sharp firsthand.
"You're talking about two of the greatest women's basketball coaches in the history of this game," Harston said. "What each of them did and was able to do at their respective institutions, you've got to admire them, because it was not easy. It was at a time when there wasn't that much money put into women's sports, and both of them built their programs the right way: a lot of hard work, a lot of great recruiting."
The fierce competition between Texas and Texas Tech not only bolstered both programs, but also the entire game of women's basketball.
"There's nobody in the game that I had more respect for than Jody," Sharp. "I thought she did a fabulous job of running the program. I think it meant more to win a game against them just because of how much respect you had for them. I think we both realized that it was a really good thing for women's basketball."
Hostile territory
"Even before I arrived here, that's all I ever heard about was, 'You're gonna die when you go to Lubbock.'"
The matchup between Texas and Texas Tech gained notoriety for the raucous crowds it would draw in both cities. In Austin, fans packed the Drum to ensure the team from West Texas left empty-handed.
"When I talk about those crowds from 12- to 15,000, 10 or 12 years ago, it was almost unheard of in the game of women's college basketball," Harston said. "And that was just totally a credit to Jody and her staff and what Marsha Sharp and her staff were able to do at Texas Tech."
When Texas arrived in Lubbock to play, the atmosphere was electric — literally. The dry, West Texas air in winter produced static electricity that made the Texas coaches' clothes cling to their skin. Conradt recalled frantically sending a manager to a convenience store for laundry sheets to combat the static. It was just one part of the environment that let them know they were no longer in Austin.
"It seemed like things always happened in Lubbock that you didn't expect," Conradt said.
The fans in Lubbock were often less benign.
"Even before I arrived here, that's all I ever heard about was, 'You're gonna die when you go to Lubbock. It's going to be an experience you'll remember.' And that's the truth," Aston said. "It was an experience that I will always remember, in a fun way. It was just one of those games you circled on your calendar, and when you went there you knew it was going to be a battle, a bloodbath basically, and you knew the fans weren't going to be very nice and you knew that it was always going to boil down to players making plays, to be honest with you."
One year, Conradt remarked to reporters that the only good thing to do in Lubbock was shop at the Dillard's. The next day, a sellout crowd arrived to the game with Dillard's bags on their heads.
"Coach would come out of that tunnel and there was no doubt we needed a bodyguard because the fans were not very fond of Texas," Aston said. "But once you stepped on the floor, you just couldn't deny the talent the players had and the 'want to' to beat each other."
When the two teams met in Reunion Arena in Dallas for the Southwest Conference tournament championship, fans rushed to fill the seats, always organizing themselves along team lines. The result: half the stadium was dressed in red and black, the other half in burnt orange and white.
"I actually came out early when we played that championship game because I wanted to see when they opened the doors," Sharp said. "It was like there was some kind of imaginary rope down the stands on the side away from the benches. It just was like we parted the seas. It was an amazing sight."
Sharp, Aston and Conradt all echoed the same sentiment: the fans were the ones who truly made the rivalry one of the greatest in college basketball.
"The fans were what made it what it was," Aston said. "They hated each other. The fans hated, but they loved the rivalry and they loved their players and they loved their teams. They were very, very passionate. When Texas came to town, it was a big event. There was definitely a buzz in that whole city when we arrived. It was just fostered and fueled, no question, by the fans."