Buzz Williams on Maryland basketball's late defensive lapses, rotation vs. USC

Ahmed Ghafir
6 hours ago
4 min read

Head coach Buzz Williams dove into what went wrong late in Maryland men’s basketball’s latest loss, this time a 17-point road loss against USC:

On the defensive lapses over final ten minutes

“If we could take the second half from UCLA and the first half from USC, those would be the two best halves. Unfortunately, they don't let you do that. I do think that we played pretty well in the first ten minutes of the second half. We're so reliant on offensive rebounds. We didn't do a great job of that, but we did a much better job of getting fouled. We did a lot better job not fouling them. They were the number one team in the country at foul rate. Number two is number one player in the country. So that was one of our priorities. And we didn’t do a good job. I thought the changing defenses at times was very effective. I thought there were spurts where as we were interchanging the players and what we were trying to do offensively, our collective thought was much better, much more fluid. There was some symmetry happening on both ends of the floor. I don't think there were as many mental errors in regards to what we were trying to execute. It doesn't mean that we're going to be 100% on that. But in regards to all going in the same direction, I thought we did that for a longer period of time. We've got to continue to find ways when there's a lull, whatever that is, other than calling timeouts. Is there a lull because we're not scoring? Is there a lull because we can't get a stop? And how can we, without playing perfect, how can we shorten those spurts?” And at times we did in the first 30 minutes.

I thought that - we've tried to give a little bit more language and pitchers to shot selection in hopes that that would increase our free throw rate. And it did, 21 points from the free throw line is why we scored over 70 points. So again, not good enough, but making some strides. I appreciate the resilience of our group. We're continuing to find different measurements and different margins and trying to tweak some things on the third side of the offense so it doesn't get stuck. Trying to do some different things on ball screen coverage, trying to do some different things at the rim, trying to protect the rim a little bit more. I thought Collin [Metcalf] played meaningful minutes. I thought Aleks [Alston] helped us some in the first half on the glass. So there were some positives. And six days in California, we've learned a lot. We've got to apply those lessons Thursday, Friday, Saturday and try to be better on Sunday afternoon at home.”

On the bench production, expecting to play more guys vs. USC

“Not because I have the answers, but trying to do the same thing over and over. Somebody that was smart said, that's insane. And so, yeah. Can we find a down back down if Solo [Washington] is in foul trouble? Can we find a down back down so Elijah [Saunders] can get a drink of water? If a guard is playing well, can he play extended minutes similar to what Diggy did? Can we find ways to disguise if something's not going right? Can we find a way to masquerade what we're trying to accomplish when we're not hitting on all cylinders? And I think we have, in a mature way, accepted where we're deficient and we have accepted how we need to improve. And they're very much trying to have the spirit of learning in regards to this is how thin it is. At halftime, we have one offensive rebound. Our offensive rebound percentage is 11%. Our defensive rebound percentage is 61%. Whereas for the game at UCLA, 53% offensive rebounding, 75% defensive. I know those are really good numbers, no matter your team, but we can't go from 53 to 11. We can't go from 75 to 61 because there's going to be too many possessions that they have the ball and too many possessions we don't.

Now we hid some of that shooting and making 21 free throws. That helps. But we actually need the combination of the two. We're counting block shots as live ball turnovers. We've made some improvements. Indiana, I think we had five blocks in a negative way at UCLA. 13 turnovers, five blocks, that's 18 times we didn't get a shot. And I was telling our guys, guys, I think the number is probably 13. We need those other five possessions tonight, 12 and three, so now we're at 15. It's just fighting in those invisible margins. And so we'll keep studying it. We'll keep figuring it out. We'll keep learning. I appreciate the development of the people and the development of the players, and we've just got to continue to keep that at a rapid rate.”

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