LAS VEGAS — Rori Harmon is running through a workout with assistant coach Sydney Carter. Harmon has to complete 10 passes in a row. Sounds easy, but there’s a catch: Each pass has to be perfect. If it’s an inch out of Carter’s shooting pocket, it doesn’t count. If it comes in too slow, it doesn’t count. Too fast? Sorry. Strange spin? Do it again.
Passing is an art form, but it’s also a math equation. Harmon has always loved math, ever since she was a kid. “It’s one of those things where everything goes where it’s supposed to,” she says. “It’s precise and it works. Like you know those satisfying TikTok videos? It’s like that.”
Harmon is referring to a short-form video genre where shapes fit together perfectly, or water is poured into a glass, filling it up to the top without spilling a drop. In order for those videos to work, measurements have to be just right.
“In math, when there is a problem, there is just one solution,” she says.
Passing is the same. Either it’s perfect, or it’s not. And if it’s not, it doesn’t count.
The 5-foot-6 Texas point guard knows what she’s talking about. In Thursday’s 66-64 win over South Carolina, after one of those perfect passes, Harmon officially became the program’s all-time leader in assists.
Two nights earlier, dressed in her Texas sweatsuit, Harmon sat in an oversized gray chair in the lobby of the Mandalay Bay casino. As she snacked on a bag of wild berry skittles, Harmon mused about how she might break the record.
“I’ve assisted to so many different players, so guessing who is the hard part,” she said. “I predict it will be an out of bounds play or something. An out of bounds execution, late in the game.”
Harmon might be psychic.
With 4:24 left in the fourth quarter of her team’s Players Era Championship victory, the Longhorns lined up an out-of-bounds set with Harmon inbounding the ball. A simple entry pass to Jordan Lee resulted in two points and the all-time Texas assist record.
And that’s not even the most impressive thing she did.
Minutes later, with seven seconds left on the clock in a tie game against her team’s SEC rival, Harmon called her own number. There’s a time to pass, and there’s a time to score. Harmon rose up over her defender and drilled a mid-range jumper with 0.7 seconds left on the clock. “Coach, he called the play at the end of the game, and I’ve been in this moment before, so it felt good coming out of my hands,” Harmon says.
In her team’s first Players Era matchup, a 76-65 win over No. 3 UCLA, Harmon had 26 points and 5 assists. Against South Carolina she finished with 6 points and 9 assists and was named the tournament MVP.
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In a lot of ways this was a re-coming out party for Harmon. As a freshman she impressed instantly, earning the Big 12 Player of the Year award and then being named an AP All-American honorable mention. Year two was more of the same. But just 12 games into her junior season, Harmon, who was averaging a career-high 14.1 points and 7.8 assists, went down with an ACL tear. She returned for the 2024-2025 season, and despite becoming the first Texas player ever to reach 1,200 points and 700 assists, she was missing some of the bounce she had during her first two years.
Now, Harmon is back to the dazzling point guard she was prior to the injury.
“Rori will be different this year. Obviously tonight she was very different,” Schaefer said after the win over UCLA. “That’s the Rori that was playing two years ago when she got hurt.”
The player who sets records and predicts exactly how she will do it. The player that hits game-winners. The player that notched the Texas assist record, passing current Washington State coach Kamie Ethridge, who led the Longhorns to a national title in 1986.
But Harmon says she wasn’t always this kind of passer. It sounds crazy, considering the fifth-year senior has played point guard her whole life. But less crazy once you understand how Harmon operates. She’s chasing perfection, which is why the drills she does with Carter are so important. “There’s only this much room to make a pass in a high-level game,” Harmon says, squinting her eyes and pushing her fingers together, leaving just a sliver of light between them. “My teammates can be open, but if I make a slightly off pass, now it’s going to take them longer to pull it over and bring it down. Then it’s almost too late.”
Harmon pauses to throw another skittle in her mouth. She chews, swallows and then stretches her lips into a half smile
“I don’t like when I make a bad pass and my coach doesn’t either,” she says, her smile widening. “I like that high standard. I appreciate it.”
That’s why Harmon and Schaefer have such a close bond. They are one in the same. They both “hate losing more than they love winning,” Harmon says, and they both demand the best out of themselves, each other and the rest of the Longhorns.
Bringing Harmon to Texas was a no-brainer for Schaefer when he took over the program in 2020. During his time at Mississippi State, Schaefer says he spent an almost unreasonable amount of time on a plane, flying from Starkville, Miss. to Houston to recruit Harmon. Once he got the Texas gig, Harmon was one of the first people he called.
“If you are going to build a good program, it starts with the point guard,” he says. “She was someone that I really wanted. She was really that first brick in building the program. I’ve seen her in her good times, her bad times. She continues to grow.”
Harmon grew up in Texas, but she didn’t grow up a Texas fan. “Houston is closer to College Station [the home of Texas A&M],” she says with a laugh. “I know everyone is going to hate me for saying that.”
Not possible. Because Harmon may not have always been a Longhorn, but she is now. She’s also responsible for a lot of the program’s growth over the last few seasons, including the 2025 Final Four, and the decision for players like Madison Booker and Jordan Lee to come to Texas. And next season, once she’s graduated, the Longhorns will enjoy the country’s No. 1 recruiting class, including the No. 8 and No. 10 players according to ESPN’s NEXT 100.
“She’s meant everything to us,” Schaefer says.
Texas has meant everything to Harmon, too. Which is why two days before setting her record, the guard fantasized about what it would feel like to be in the Texas record books.
“I don’t know where my name is going to be, I don’t know where they are putting it, but it’s going to be nice to have that kind of connection and attachment to this University. You think about the players that have come before me, and how hard they’ve worked, so to be in a position like this, I just think about the position I’m in and the teammates I’m surrounded by. An assist doesn’t count unless they make the shot.”
To understand what it feels like for Harmon to make one of those perfect passes, like the one she made to Lee on Thursday, we have to go back to math class.
“It feels like getting an A on a test,” she says. “One that you studied really hard for.”
And some passes, like the ones that help win games and break records, feel more like an A+.
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