FORT WORTH, Texas — As the final seconds ticked away from No. 1 seed Texas’s 77-41 win against No. 2 Michigan on Monday night in the Elite Eight, Longhorns coach Vic Schaefer took a knee. Senior point guard Rori Harmon ran to embrace him, and the pair nearly fell to the floor. 

Then they got to their feet, still embracing as Schaefer shook Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico’s hand, eyes red with emotion. Madison Booker waited at the end of the handshake line, grabbing Harmon into her own arms. 

“I prayed for a long time last night that I’d have that moment with her today,” Schaefer said. “That kid’s been so special. She’s been the heart of our team and program for a while… Whenever this thing does end, it’s going to be a little different for the old ball coach to come walking into the gym after five years.” 

With the win, Texas is in rare air among women’s college basketball programs. The Longhorns reached the Final Four for the fifth time in program history. It’s only the second time in program history that they’ve accomplished the feat in consecutive seasons, joining the 1986 and ’87 squads under legendary coach Jody Conradt. 

After the demolition, Texas is only the ninth team all-time to enter the Final Four after winning each of its first four NCAA Tournament games by at least 20 points. The last five teams to do so each won a national championship. 

Perhaps no player has defined Texas’ ascent to the top of the sport more than Harmon. The fifth-year senior tore her ACL during her third season on campus, an injury that threatened to derail her career. Instead, it showed her that she needed to transform. 

After averaging more than 11 shots per game during her first three seasons on poor efficiency, Harmon embraced a setup role this season. During Texas’ run to the Elite Eight, she has managed to take over games despite averaging a career-low (by far) 7.5 shots per game. 

“There are going to be some games where I can go for 13 assists and take five shots, and there are some games that I take 12 to 15,” Harmon said. “It just really depends. You never know who’s going to go off, we have so many people who can do so many different things.” 

Early in the third quarter, Texas had missed 20 of its last 24 shots, erasing the most efficient quarter of coach Vic Schaefer’s Longhorns tenure. After sitting for a stretch in the second, Harmon decided to take matters into her own hands. 

After the lead was cut to 11, Harmon stepped back and hit a 3-pointer, the first of the game for Texas. On the next two plays, she found forward Breya Cunningham for back-to-back baskets, including a fastbreak dime that handed her the ball right under the basket. 

Harmon’s tenacious effort helped key off an absurd 35-6 run that turned a tightening game into a 40-point decimation. She finished with seven points, seven rebounds, 13 assists — and only five shot attempts. 

“The past years I’ve been with Texas, I’ve seen Rori be even more demanding of us,” center Kyla Oldacre said. “Knowing what we need to do and what we need to fulfill offensively, defensively, and just that she trusts us, it gives us a lot of confidence in how she produces.” 

The All-American Booker shook off two early turnovers to score a game-high 19 points, one of only four players in double-figures. The defense was a constant, holding Michigan to only 22.8% from the field, the worst shooting performance by a team in Elite Eight history. Down the stretch, it was Oldacre’s rebounding that helped put the game away. 

Michigan came into the matchup on a dominant run, winning games by an average of 27.7 points in the NCAA Tournament. A trio of superstar sophomores, led by Third-Team All-American Olivia Olson, helped power the Wolverines to only the third Elite Eight in program history. 

However, Texas managed to drag the Wolverines into the gutter with their defense. No Michigan player finished with more than 11 points as the Longhorns’ dominant run through the tournament continued. 

“Rori has been in a lot of those situations, and just her composure throughout the game, her ability not to get sped up throughout the game, her ability to find her team, who’s hot through the game, I mean, she just showed incredible experience,” Barnes Arico said. “They’ve been there, they’ve done it before. To knock them off, we’ve got to be on it, and we weren’t able to generate that tonight.” 

One year ago, Texas reached the Final Four before losing 74-57 to South Carolina. The Longhorns have spent the last 360 days waiting for their next shot. With fellow 1-seed UCLA on the docket, Texas is hoping to get over the hump and clinch its first national championship since 1986. 

Schaefer will allow himself one indulgence. Turkey hunting season has started, so he’ll wake up early and grant himself one turkey kill. After he’s done, Schaefer plans to come into the office by 10 a.m. and fly out for Phoenix. 

“I told them after the game, we’ve been down this road,” Schaefer said. “I’m hopeful that experience will carry over and help us get ready for what’s coming.” 

Just like with the pitch clock, the advent of robot umpires did not break Major League Baseball. The automated ball-strike system (ABS) debuted in the major leagues Wednesday after years of testing in the minor leagues, and in the 47 games since, exactly 94 calls have been overturned. Some were egregious, others by literal millimeters. The general consensus, based on in-stadium fan reaction and seamless integration into television broadcasts: Not only does ABS work, it makes the game better.

Skeptics and holdouts remain — just as they do with the pitch clock two seasons after it was added. Unlike the complaints about the pitch clock that mostly concern one’s personal preferences, the criticisms of ABS are rooted in math and logic. The system’s margin of error (approximately 1/6th of an inch, according to the league) is larger than some of the calls being overturned. And if the system is as good and accurate as the league says, does it not make sense to utilize it for all ball-strike calls?

The latter issue particularly will be adjudicated over time. For now, though, the novelty, speed and presentation of ABS are hits with fans — and plenty of players, too. The 175 challenges issued, signaled by a hitter, catcher or pitcher with a double tap to the head immediately following the pitch, have run smoothly and efficiently. Even better, the three-dimensional graphic tracking a pitch’s tail into or out of the strike zone is deeply engaging, a little mystery box that more often than not reveals itself in an important moment.

The end goal is fairness — the game being decided not by what the umpire necessarily believes but by a set, standard strike zone for each player: 17 inches wide and at 27% of a player’s measured height (bottom) to 53.5% (top), with the ball’s location for ABS purposes measured on a plane 8.5 inches behind the front of the plate rather than anywhere in a theoretical three-dimensional zone.

What makes this version of ABS so convincing is it passes the eye test. That was always the burden of proof for any robot umpiring system, whether it’s fully integrated or challenge-based. It needs to avoid calls that look wrong. And so far, even with a dozen challenges to pitches falling within that stated margin of error — and 42 total decided by less than a half-inch — ABS is holding up its end of the bargain.

In its honor, then, a baker’s dozen superlatives from the first four days of ABS, the latest baseball innovation to get off to a good start.

There are moments that offer a pretty good sense that something new is going to work. This feels like one for ABS. The Cincinnati crowd’s reaction was thunderous. And the situation itself – twice it salvaged a bases-loaded opportunity. This system plays. pic.twitter.com/vS0TYzBX6H

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) March 29, 2026

In the bottom of the sixth inning of the Cincinnati Reds’ game Saturday against the Boston Red Sox, with the bases loaded and two outs, home plate umpire C.B. Bucknor rung Suárez up on a called third strike on a 1-2 count. Suárez tapped his head, stepped out of the box and saw the pitch just miss the zone — a win for him.

On the very next pitch from Boston right-hander Ryan Watson, one that was about an inch off the plate, Bucknor punched him out once more. And just like the previous time, Suárez challenged and it was overturned.

“Outside! The loudest cheers of the game,” Reds play-by-play man John Sadak said, noting Cincinnati had hit a pair of home runs, “come on back-to-back challenges!”

Suárez wound up grounding out on a full-count pitch, a rather anticlimactic end to an electric at-bat. Turns out that only one player has salvaged his at-bat with an ABS challenge and then homered later in the same at-bat: New York Yankees star Aaron Judge.

The full-count sweeper Seattle Mariners reliever Cooper Criswell unleashed against Cleveland Guardians hitter C.J. Kayfus on Sunday night tilted with an unholy 19 inches of horizontal movement — a bigger break than the width of the plate. Raleigh, the MVP runner-up, caught the pitch at the very top corner of the zone and within a second tapped his head.

No, this wasn’t a particularly high-leverage situation. Seattle led, 7-0, at the time of the pitch. And even more, it was extraordinarily close — nicking the edge of the zone with 0.2 inches to spare. Between a fraction of the ball clipping the zone and having the gumption to challenge a high-strike call that catchers usually don’t, Raleigh deserves credit. He made a decisive choice, and it was the right one.

Matt Wallner took this pitch with the bases loaded and two outs then challenged the strike call. pic.twitter.com/s8kkNd8X9i

— Codify (@CodifyBaseball) March 29, 2026

The diameter of a baseball in the major leagues is somewhere between 2.86 and 2.94 inches. The Rico Garcia pitch Wallner, a Minnesota Twins outfielder, challenged Sunday afternoon was 4.8 inches inside the zone — more than a ball and a half, in parlance often used by players pre-ABS to describe calls that didn’t go their way.

That said, the reason Wallner challenged made at least a little sense: The Twins and Baltimore Orioles were tied at 5 in the seventh inning. Minnesota loaded the bases. And it was a full-count pitch. If ever there’s an ideal time to challenge, it’s in that sort of situation. Credit is due to Garcia, too, for making Wallner’s challenge look so feeble: He unleashed a monster of a front-hip sinker, starting the ball toward Wallner only to watch it run back over the plate, a la Greg Maddux — except at 98 mph.

Biggest Miss: Tripp Gibson

In the seventh inning of a game the Toronto Blue Jays trailed 6-2, George Springer stared at an 0-2 splitter from A’s reliever Elvis Alvarado and thought he had worked the count to 1-2. Gibson, an umpire with more than a decade of experience, punched him out. It was an exceptionally bad call, the sort for which ABS was conceived to overturn, and it did in spectacular fashion: The pitch was 4.3 inches off the outside corner — 1.3 inches more than any other pitch called a strike thus far, according to ESPN Research.

The successful challenge went for naught, as Springer swung through a 99.4-mph fastball for the third strike. It served as a good reminder nonetheless for Gibson and all other umpires really: In the ABS era, obvious mistakes will be replayed and laughed at. There’s no excuse for such excessive failures, and for all the excellent work umpires typically do, their mandate is clear: Avoid at all costs the excessively bad miss.

The Challengingest Team: Minnesota Twins

Wallner isn’t the only one. The Twins have called for 11 challenges over their first three games. Their batters went 4-for-6 — a smashing success compared to other hitters — while their catchers went 3-for-5.

Perhaps it was the umpiring. Maybe the Twins are among the teams that do not care to pocket a challenge for a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency situation late in games. (Each team receives two at the beginning of the game and retains them upon a successful challenge.) Whatever the case, Minnesota is followed by the Los Angeles Angels (5-for-9) and Chicago White Sox (4-for-9), with Colorado (1-for-2) not challenging until its third game.

The Challengengiest Player: Mike Trout

For much of the 2010s, Trout was universally regarded as the best baseball player on the planet. Recent years have been unkind to him health-wise, which is why seeing him act with such confidence at the plate was a welcome sign.

Over the first three days of challenges, Trout asked for more than any player: four total, three of them successful. He has always commanded the zone and could wind up being one of the biggest beneficiaries if he can continue to use ABS to work himself into hitters’ counts. Nobody in baseball had a better first five days of the season than Trout.

Most Trustworthy: Catchers

Salvy teaching Doug Eddings the bottom of the strike zone.

Over and Over and Over again.

But Eddings refuses to learn. 😂 pic.twitter.com/UxKxL56jqi

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) March 28, 2026

Teams spent much of the offseason and spring training devising plans to use ABS. When would they challenge was a primary question, yes, but who would challenge was even more imperative. The clear answer, at least in the early going, is catchers. Kansas City’s Salvador Perez was the early star, going 4-for-4 in challenges — all of them on low fastballs, three of the four around a half-inch away from being out of the zone. Perez’s peers joined him in the overturn party. More than half of challenges so far have come from catchers, who successfully overturned 59 of 92 calls, a 64.1% success rate. Compare that to hitters, who went 33-for-78, or just 42.3%.

Allergic to Challenges: Pitchers

Those conversations among teams almost all settled on the same conclusion: The worst person to challenge is the one standing 60 feet, 6 inches from home plate. Of the 175 challenges issued, only five came from pitchers — and just two were successful.

Both were impressive. The first came from A’s reliever Hogan Harris, who fired an inside fastball with runners on first and second and none out in the bottom of the eighth, holding a 6-3 lead. The pitch, called a ball, looked like it made the count 2-1. Instead, upon its overturn (0.3 inches), Harris was ahead 1-2.

The other scenario was even higher leverage: With the tying run at the plate in the bottom of the ninth, Baltimore closer Ryan Helsley twirled a full-count slider originally called a ball. He tapped his hat and, like Harris, was right by 0.3 inches. Without that call, it’s first and second with one out. With it, Helsley was just one out from a save, which he later secured.

Most Popular Count: 2-2

The count with the most challenges so far is 2-2, which makes some sense. The specter of an at-bat ending on a pitch is likely to push batters and pitchers both in the direction of challenging two-strike situations. This list is likely to stabilize over time, with other counts moving toward the top of the leaderboard — particularly 1-1. After being behind 1-2, batters over the last five years have slashed .170/.225/.270. Following a 2-1 count, on the other hand, they’re at .235/.388/.400. One pitch, nearly a 300-point OPS difference. Another count likely to increase in frequency of usage: 2-1, with a 450-point spread between the OPS after 2-2 vs. 3-1.

Here are the total number of challenges by count:

2-2: 27
0-0: 25
1-1: 22
3-2: 19
0-1: 16
2-1: 13
1-2: 13
0-2: 11
3-1: 10
1-0: 10
2-0: 6
3-0: 3

Favorite Inning to Challenge: 6th

Another one that’s likely to shift over time. The busiest half-inning by a long shot is the top of the ninth, with 20 challenges alone there. Because the bottom of the ninth often is not played, it’s not nearly as busy.

Here are the total number of challenges by inning:

6th: 26
7th: 25
9th: 24
8th: 20
4th: 18
5th: 18
1st: 15
2nd: 14
3rd: 11
10th: 4

Best Pitch to Challenge: Four-Seam Fastball

There’s an exception for hitters when it comes to challenging, and it’s the ol’ reliable heater. Hitters have challenged 26 four-seamers, and they’ve gotten them right 65.4% of the time — 17 of 26. The two-seam fastball, meanwhile, has been brutal for hitters, catchers and pitchers alike: just 11 of 33 challenges have been successful.

Here are the total number of challenges by pitch, with overturns:

Four-seam fastball: 40 of 60 successful
Two-seam fastball: 11 of 33
Slider: 11 of 25
Cutter: 6 of 15
Changeup: 9 of 14
Sweeper: 9 of 14
Curveball: 6 of 11
Splitter: 2 of 3

It was a perfect situation for a challenge: Bottom of the seventh, tying runner at the plate, 2-2 count. With left-handed hitter Victor Scott II at the plate, Tampa Bay catcher Nick Fortes set up for reliever Garrett Cleavinger to throw a sweeper off the plate. Cleavinger yanked it — and still managed to land the pitch on the inside corner. Missing a location by nearly 2 feet was a near automatic ball pre-ABS. But this system is not about hitting a spot; landing a pitch in the strike zone is more important. And when Fortes tapped his head, it wound up changing a full count into a strikeout.

If anyone is going to bring showmanship into ABS, it’s Arozarena, the Seattle Mariners outfielder with a propensity to sign autographs in between innings. In the bottom of the second inning Saturday, Cleveland’s Joey Cantillo ripped a slider low and inside. Arozarena was certain he had drawn a walk when he started jogging to first base, only for home plate umpire Nestor Ceja to punch him out. Arozarena didn’t believe it. He turned back around, took off his shin and elbow protectors and started jogging toward first base — at which point the scoreboard showed the pitch missing by a whole 0.2 inches. It was the baseball equivalent to a no-look pass: While the embarrassment of missing one is high, nailing it like Arozarena did, as if he unequivocally knew, will buy him more opportunities going forward.