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Texas women's basketball secret weapon is a star nobody guards
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- Texas women's basketball secret weapon is a star nobody guards
AUSTIN, Texas — Balancing life as a basketball player on a national championship contending team as an aspiring pre-med student requires organization, so Jordan Lee developed a system. The Texas Longhorns guard schedules all of her activities three months out and meticulously color codes each item: Orange for basketball, blue for beauty appointments, red for schoolwork and green for name, image and likeness.
That detail-oriented mentality inspired Lee to request a meeting with Longhorns head coach Vic Schaefer toward the end of her freshman season last spring, during the Southeastern Conference tournament. Lee, the No. 9 ranked player nationally in her high school recruiting class, was coming off the bench for a Texas team headlined by All-Americans Madison Booker and Rori Harmon.
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Lee walked into Schaefer's office armed with game film and stats analyzing her contributions as well as the team's performance.
"Playing behind (former Texas guard) Shay Holle, who is so talented and had played for Coach Schaefer for four years, I wanted to see what I could do better," Lee said. "That was a huge point in my career."
From that point on, Schaefer trusted Lee to play in high-pressure moments during Texas' postseason run to the NCAA national semifinals. In the Longhorns' Final Four loss to South Carolina, Lee scored 16 points off the bench and offered a preview of what was to come.
"Going into this year, I had that game in my head as, 'OK, I think she's capable of bringing a lot to the table,'" Schaefer said.
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More: Midseason women's college basketball awards: MVP, most improved and more
Fast forward a few months, and Lee is enjoying a breakout sophomore season as the unsung hero of an undefeated Texas team ranked No. 2 in the country. After averaging 5.8 points per game as a freshman, the graduation of multiple starters and a slew of injuries provided a springboard for Lee's sophomore leap. Now in the starting rotation, she is averaging 15.6 points, 1.8 steals and 33.5 minutes while shooting 45% from the field and 39.2% on 3-pointers. Lee's even better against top competition, averaging 17.7 points in six games against ranked opponents.
The main difference? Confidence.
"Knowing that you've performed on the biggest stages a multitude of times," Lee said. "Already being equipped with what it felt like to be in that moment is definitely something that set me apart and helped me be ready for the year that I'm having so far."
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And yet, Lee flies under the radar in comparison to the other two members of Texas' leading trio. Booker, a junior forward, is a walking double-double and reigning SEC Player of the Year. Harmon, a fifth-year point guard, recently became the program's all-time leader in career assists and could add career steals.
Lee most recently went viral for her cheerleading skills when, during Texas' 120-38 beatdown of Southeastern Louisiana, she and a couple Longhorn teammates picked up pom poms on the sideline. While Lee caught some flak online for a gesture that was perceived as disrespectful to the opponent, Schaefer said the moment was just Lee "being herself" and encouraging her teammates.
Make no mistake, though: Lee's on-court exploits and her emergence as a two-way star are integral to Texas' national championship aspirations.
"Her development has really been on a pretty steep slope," Schaefer said. "I think the kid works really hard. She plays the game really hard and, again, brings a lot to the table on both ends."
'I don't understand how people just ignore her'
Through 17 games this season, Lee has already scored more points and made more 3-pointers than she did in the entirety of her freshman season. She leads the Longhorns in minutes per game and is second in scoring average, behind Booker.
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On New Year's Day, Lee scored a career-best 23 points in Texas' 89-71 comeback win at Missouri. Three days later, she led Texas with 17 points while her defense locked down Ole Miss leading scorer Cotie McMahon for most of the game as the Longhorns beat the No. 15 Rebels 67-64. In both games, Lee played all 40 minutes.
"She is the key to their success. Madison Booker, of course, is a superstar, but they don't win without Jordan Lee," Ole Miss head coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin said. "We respect her so much. I don't understand how people just ignore her. This kid does a little bit of everything for them and makes you work really hard."
Because Booker and Harmon command a lion's share of attention from opposing defenses, most games Lee only has to beat the opponents' third-best defender — an easy task when you consider her quick-release 3-point jump shot, off-the-dribble package and seemingly endless endurance.
Lee doesn't crave the spotlight but doesn't shy away from it, either.
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"I feel like in this day and age, you gotta love it and everything that comes with those moments and the opportunity," she said. "Especially having your face, your last name, where you're from, be attached to a lot of those. I definitely take great pride in representing everybody that has helped me get to this point."
Both of Lee's parents, Roderick Lee and Georgia Kovich-Lee, played collegiate basketball in Canada, though they were careful not to pigeonhole Lee and her older sister into the sport. Both girls ended up playing in college (Sophia Lee is a redshirt junior guard at Sacramento State). Growing up in Stockton, California, Jordan Lee's first basketball experience was playing with her sister on a local boys' team, coached by their father.
She rarely played, and when she did the boys almost never passed to her, but Lee fell in love with basketball because of the team environment and the thrill of pursuing a collective goal.
"It's a little bit different to feel surrounded by so many people who are kind of invested in the same thing," she said. "Being that young, obviously, nothing serious, but you're still working towards something. And that was like the first time that I had really felt like what it was like to be on the team."
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By middle school, Lee was head over heels for hoops. Around that time, she asked her father to buy her $40 worth of markers so she could start her color-coded system of sticky notes — a precursor to the strategy she uses today as a biology major studying to become a dermatologist.
Roderick Lee, a former drill sergeant who served in three branches of the U.S. military, used to take his daughters to drill practice with him and takes partial responsibilty for Jordan's love of routine and organization. But he said her ambition and dedication is all her own.
"She had a fire early," Roderick Lee said. "Her drive, automatically, is a different mindset."
More: LSU vs. Texas leads women's college basketball TV, streaming guide
Jordan Lee was coached in Stockton, California, by her father, Roderick Lee, a former college basketball player.
Once Lee sets her mind to something, she won't stop. She hated running but won back-to-back state track championships in the 800-meter and the 1,600-meter because, as she put it, "I like to win." In the high school state semifinal basketball game her junior year, Lee scored 47 points in her team's loss, and afterward sobbed because she felt she let her team down.
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During the pandemic, when almost every basketball court in Stockton was shut down, the Lee showed up at 6:30 a.m. to the only open gym in the city. During Jordan's senior year of high school, Roderick came to her school every day during lunch period to help her squeeze in an extra workout.
The routine planted the seed for an important lesson that Lee didn't fully internalize until college: It's better to hold yourself to high standards than to let others' expectations define you.
Jordan Lee learned to star in her role at Texas
Lee is quick to say that she's not a perfectionist, despite her note-taking habits. But when she began her freshman season at Texas, she struggled because it was one of the first times in her life that she didn't achieve immediate results.
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Schaefer doesn't like to call many timeouts and refrains from substitutions when the team is on a run, which left few opportunities for freshmen to get consistent minutes.
"Someone like myself who's spending a lot of time just thinking and potentially even overthinking, I feel like I tended to put a lot of pressure on myself to go in and make something happen, or see if something that was broken that I could potentially fix," Lee said. "And in that moment, I was just like, 'OK, I kind of need to take a step back and maybe just relax a little bit and let the moment come to me.'"
Lee and her best friend, Longhorns backup point guard Bryanna Preston, leaned on each other. They invented entertaining bench celebrations to unleash when teammates made a big play, their way of "starring in our roles," Preston said. Schaefer called the duo the "juice" of the team.
With Preston's help, Lee got out of her own head. Over the summer, she worked on improving her 3-point shot. She won a gold medal with USA Basketball at the 2025 FIBA U19 World Cup, where she embraced a leadership role as captain.
Texas guard Jordan Lee has embraced a leadership role with the Longhorns.
This season, Lee and Preston are still planning sideline celebrations although they aren't on the bench together as much.
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"Honestly, she's always been confident, and I love that about her," Preston said. "I'm able to feed off of that myself and be confident in my own game. So just seeing her thrive, I'm just really proud of her, because anybody could just give up at any moment and just stop putting in the work and get a little down. But she, like, literally did the complete opposite."
In hindsight, Lee said she's grateful to have had the chance to learn from Booker and Harmon before becoming their co-star.
"It's a blessing," Lee said. "A lot of people talk about the pressure that comes with being a great player and performing at this level. And I feel like it's very nice to have two people that are in front of you, and you kind of get accustomed to things before you're in that deep water and you're either primary look on the scouting report or the biggest face on one of the best college basketball teams in the country right now."
Why Lee is key to Longhorns' NCAA title aspirations
On a Saturday afternoon in January inside Texas' practice facility, Lee flew down the court in a dead sprint, racing against the clock. She and two teammates weaved and passed the ball as they ran to one end of the court and back, finishing the timed drill with a layup.
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On the back wall of the gym was a whiteboard with a main objective scrawled in the upper right-hand corner: "2026 NATIONAL CHAMPIONS!!!"
And below that: "Whatever it takes."
A whiteboard in Texas basketball's practice facility displays the Longhorns' goal of winning the 2026 national title, a year after losing in the Final Four.
Texas is 17-0, its best start since the 1986 championship season. The Longhorns acknowledged in a team meeting at the beginning of the season a national title is the ultimate goal, but Schaefer prefers to emphasize the journey.
"They kind of carry that torch," Schaefer said. "I try to keep them focused one step at a time, climbing the mountain. Don't get up there and start looking at the mountaintop, because you'll miss a step, and you'll fall back down and you got to climb them all again. I try to keep them focused one day at a time, embracing the process."
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Texas smothers opponents with defensive pressure, ranking 11th in the country in turnovers forced per game (24.7). The offense is as disciplined, ranked second in assist-to-turnover ratio (1.94) and third in field goal percentage (51.9).
The three-headed monster of Booker, Harmon and Lee is at the core of the Longhorns' success.
"Those three play off each other as well as anybody I've ever had," Schaefer said. "You take your eye off one of them, they're going to make you pay."
Lee's development became especially important when the Longhorns were hit by early season injuries to Preston, freshman guard Aaliyah Crump and senior transfer guard Ashton Judd. Crump remains out while Preston and Judd have since returned, but for most of the non-conference schedule Texas operated with a seven-player rotation.
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"One of the only benefits about having such a limited roster is kind of finding everybody's niche," Lee said. "Through that, you get to play through some mistakes that you wouldn't necessarily get to iron out when we did have a longer bench, like playing with two fouls in the first quarter, or, you know, someone takes a bad shot or has a couple bad turnovers. So it kind of allowed us to get really comfortable with each other."
Lee's increased production is partly the result of more playing time, and partly the result of her targeted improvement. In high school, 3-point shooting was never a huge part of her game. But the Longhorns are near the bottom of Division I teams in 3-point attempts, and Lee realized she could make the team more dynamic by hitting from deep.
This season, Lee is shooting 39.2% behind the arc and leads the Longhorns with 40 made 3s; the next-closest player is Booker with eight.
"This summer, she got in the gym, she worked hard in her craft every day," Booker said. "She was going to make shots before and after breakfast. I mean, it's showing now, but I'm not surprised, because I've already seen this before."
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Lee's catch-and-shoot ability and off-ball movement are so effective Schaefer runs lots of plays designed to get Lee open shots, banking on Harmon and Booker to act as decoys and get the ball into her hands.
If a Texas player gets a steal on defense, chances are Lee is already taking off and ready to receive an outlet pass for a transition bucket. Her track background assures she never gets tired.
Jordan Lee, right, and her older sister Sophia Lee were both prolific track runners, experience that gave Jordan Lee the endurance to lead Texas basketball in minutes per game.
"She's like the Energizer bunny," Schaefer said.
While other Texas players tell stories of their shocking first practices under Schaefer, whose nickname is the Secretary of Defense, defense always came easily to Lee. Even playing alongside two other elite perimeter defenders in Booker and Harmon, Lee is often assigned to guard the opposing team's best player.
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"She talks and communicates really well on the floor, and I think that permeates through your team," Schaefer said. "She has a calming effect when you're on the defensive end in that she is communicating down there."
After practice the day before Texas' SEC home opener against Ole Miss, Lee told associate head coach Elena Lovato she planned to go under screens while defending McMahon, who isn't a 3-point threat. Lee assured the coach she would adjust if she got beat more than once early in the game.
But she asked Lovato to send her McMahon's shot zone chart, anyway, just to be extra prepared.
If there's one thing Jordan Lee believes, it's that greatness lies in the details.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Jordan Lee's breakout season could push Texas Longhorns to NCAA title
