Buzz Williams after Minnesota road win: "the resilience of our guys today showed up on the scoreboard"

Ahmed Ghafir
23 hours ago
3 min read

Sunday marked a day of firsts for Buzz Williams after Maryland picked up its first conference road win under its new head coach, marking its first win away from College Park since Thanksgiving week, while picking up his first win in a Big Ten game decided by single digits. After capitalizing on the chance to end a four-game losing streak and move to 9-14 on the season, Williams opened his postgame interview with Chris Knoche by noting he’s “very thankful.”

“Obviously, I think the resilience of our guys today showed up on the scoreboard,” Williams added. “[I] have great respect and inspired by how they were raised, that they've continued to fight through all of this. It's hard to overcome when an opponent makes 14 threes, particularly when you're on the road. But I thought the fight, the togetherness, was as good as it's been in a long, long time. So I'm very happy that the result is what it was.”

Of course, to the surprise of no one, the win came off the heels of another dominant performance from Diggy Coit, proving capable of heating up like a microwave as fans have seen through the course of his lone season in College Park.

Coit scored 20 of his game-high 29 points in the second half, finishing the game while accounting for Maryland’s last nine points, but none were bigger than his game-winning three to seal the win with a stepback three over Langston Reynolds for the game-winning jumper. How the final play materialized ended up being up to the players, Williams admitted.

“We have two specials and then we had a draw up that we were prepared to use relative to how they defend which I just asked the kids, which one? You guys have earned the right to be in this position. We'll run whichever one you say. If you want me to do the draw up, I'll do the draw up. If you want to do one of the other two that you know. And the one that they chose, obviously, it wasn't a clean look, but it was the look that we were trying to get a lot. Obviously, this week, guys are playing different minutes and so it wasn't really smooth, but they did understand the concept of it. I thought we were much better on the glass, on both sides of the ball than we've been. We didn't give the ball to the other team at such a high rate. We were able to get fouled. At some point, we've got to make a higher percentage of free throws, but 71% is good or okay. My brain's kind of scrambled so I'm just thankful we won.”

Solomon Washington finished just shy of a double-double with nine points and ten rebounds, including four offensive, while Darius Adams and Andre Mills finished in double figures to combine for 23 points on 9-of-19 shooting, but maybe the underrated storyline was the expanded opportunities for veteran Collin Metcalf.

Metcalf finished with four points and three rebounds after hitting both of his shot attempts, in addition to notching his first career steal at Maryland, in a season-high 19 minutes as Williams noted his presence adds “some level of size.

“It gives us some level of more potential physicality. Their offense is very unique, number one basket assist rate in the United States. They made 20 baskets, 15 of them were assisted. They were averaging 71% of their shots were assisted. They get fouled at a high rate because their offense is so unique and it puts you in a scramble motion. I thought Devin's plan was spot on in the different coverages we had, and for the first time in a long time, I thought our execution of that plan, the collective thought, there was less confusion, there was more chatter by the players on the floor and on the bench relative to what we were trying to accomplish.That was positive. 14 threes is a lot. 33 out of their 47 shots were from three. That's a very high percentage of volume from the three. But everything's off the catch, and it's because their offense creates that, and so how you handle that? And I thought our plan was good with one day of practice. We came over here early this morning after chapel and I think we did 12 different reps, which were important, and then I thought the execution of it was better.”

Maryland will look to extend the positive momentum into Wednesday night when they host Iowa for a 6 PM tipoff.

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