Maryland men's basketball head coach Buzz Williams building roster chemistry, leaning on former, current head coaches ahead of year one

Ahmed Ghafir
Jul 25
12 min read

It’s been 115 days since Buzz Williams was announced as the new head coach of Maryland men’s basketball, and with a completely new team in place, the new staff has put a premium on building relationships across the roster.

“Although we're in week six of eight, I kind of think that we have gained some traction. Number one, most importantly, in my opinion, is the relationship category. I want to spend some time with these guys,” Williams said on the Kevin Sheehan Show on Friday. “A lot of the things that players say about me, it's just because they're good people, and they're covering up a lot of my deficiencies to be kind. But I also think there is an element of my willingness to give my time to them to invest in their life. Yeah, every now and then we'll talk about dribbling better or trying to shoot a different ball, but more importantly, who they are as young men and who they're going to become. I try to invest most of my time in the summer in getting to know who they are, what's important to them, what they like, what they don't like. How can I help them? What are their trigger points? And you can only do that through time. And so we utilized our first three weeks. We never practiced five on five whatsoever just because I wanted to be in the gym. I wanted to sweat with them. I wanted to actually learn their game.”

While Buzz Williams has previously spoken about his longstanding relationships with a pair of former Maryland head coaches, including Gary Williams, he’s also leaned on the other former Maryland coach who left College Station for College Park.

“I have known coach [Mark] Turgeon specifically nearly my entire career. Obviously, he replaced Billy Gillespie. I was an assistant for Billy Gillespie, and by the time coach Turge got to College Station, I had already become a head coach but a lot of the players that were on his team when he arrived were players that I had recruited or been a part of recruiting. I have known coach Turgeon forever, and he and I have text and spoken a few times. I haven't had a chance to see him in person since I have been here, but I have a long list of things to do on my phone, hopefully that I can knock some of those things off in August and seeing coach Turgeon is one of those things.”

As Buzz continues to pay respect to the program's past, football head coach Mike Locksley chipped in this summer to give the newest head coach a late-night tour of Jones-Hill House, formerly Cole Field House.

“Coach Locksley has been an unbelievably kind onboarder in helping me with all of this. And a couple of times I had mentioned to him, ‘Hey, Coach, when nobody's around, can I just have an hour of your time here or there and just talk to me about Maryland? Talk to me about the school, talk to me about football, talk - just anything. And one of the times that we spent, he came and picked me up at the hotel, and this was, like, late at night, and he's like, ‘hey, I'm going to take you on a tour. Nobody will see us.’ And he took me to Cole Field House and I was like, Oh, yeah. Everybody's been telling me about this. What do they do with this now? And he's like, Oh, this is our facility. And I'm like, Oh, I didn't know. And, you know, it's like, 11 o'clock at night, and it's just coach and I and we pull up, and I was like, coach, this is like cool. And I'm old now, so a lot of things I don't say are cool anymore, and I'm like, wow, this is, this is, like, really unique that they have utilized and transformed cold Field House into what it is now. Like, past, present and future. Lot of great stories and memories and experiences in that building.”

More from Buzz Williams on the offseason, year one and learning about his new team

On adjusting to the area

“Everything has been good. I think we've been here - well, I've been here a little over 100 days. And to your point, I think we were six years in Milwaukee, five years in Blacksburg and six years in College Station. My wife and I got married towards the tail end of my career as an assistant. I started as a head coach at the University of New Orleans. So we've kind of lived all over the place our children were born - we have four children - they were all born at different stops along the way. It has been a long time since we've lived in a non-college town and so it's been a good change of pace. Anytime there's transition in jobs, whether you're the head coach or assistant coach, there's a lot of moving parts as it relates to jobs and your staff and the spouses and the children. Everything thus far, you never know because you haven't lived it yet but I think we've tried to make sound decisions personally and sound decisions professionally. But as you mentioned, Kevin, it's all been happening at warp speed and that's kind of what has happened, not just at Maryland. That happens everywhere now in college athletics within what the model has become. And so to some degree, when I was hired, it was somewhat later in the process than normal. And when there's zero players on the team - that's not a complaint, that was just a reality. How do you make progress? Relative to not only making decisions for now, but starting to also position yourself as best you can with the future as it relates to the players that are available, whether that be freshmen, whether that be in the portal. And so our staff's done a really good job, in my opinion, of trying to make sure that we find the right people and the right families but also the right talent. And so we've went at it as hard as we can and we're thankful to be here. Not everybody has moved yet, but it's getting closer and once summer session two ends, it'll take a couple of more weeks, but everybody's at different stages. Some of them are still in the hotels. Some of them are fully settled. And if you come to my house and you want to help unpack boxes, there’s plenty to do.”

How much Buzz Williams knew about Maryland

“Transparently, Kevin, I knew probably the top shelf part of it. Most of my career, I have studied coaches more than I have studied programs. I've studied coaches more than I have studied players just because I grew up wanting to be a coach and wanting to learn from excellent leaders in all sports, not just in basketball. And so I was more familiar with the coaches at Maryland than I was the program at Maryland. And I understand in some ways, you could say that's interconnected but I have learned more in 100 plus days that I've been here about Maryland and the program, and the support of the program, the importance of the program and what it means within not only the campus community, but the community and the state and the region, and so I feel very honored and humbled what has been an unbelievable history. I've been reading several books since I've been hired - a little bit on the program, a little bit on more of the former players and former coaches. So I'm more educated than I was the first day that I met you, and so I feel blessed to even be able to be in this office and be in this facility.”

Whether anything has been emphasized by others to Buzz Williams

“I think what's been emphasized the most is just what a home court advantage Xfinity is. And that happens at other places, and it sounds like it's very much a part of the Big Ten. And the difficulty in winning on the road, maybe more so than other Power Four leagues. That's one of the things on my list that I will study some in August, as we start studying some of the Big Ten teams and style of play and some of their rosters, is I haven't heard one person that has evidenced that has not mentioned among many things, the one prevailing thought is the advantage of Xfinity. The support, the crowds, the students, the season ticket holders, the longtime season ticket holders. Like how important it is and how consistent they are in their support and what a difficult place it is to win at. I mean, I've even had other Big Ten coaches tell me that, and I'm like, I appreciate you telling me, obviously I haven't been there for a game, so I didn't know. But everybody that has, for sure, been a prevailing thought.”

On the complete roster rebuild with 15 scholarships to fill

“I try to handle all of this in the same way I would handle it publicly or privately and just speak the truth. None of it do I say in a complaining tone. None of it do I say in an arrogant or egotistical way. This is the fifth time I've taken a head coaching job, but it's the first time that I've taken a head coaching job in the era of the portal and NIL. And the previous four times and this time, there is no comparison. The only comparison is, yeah, I have to move houses, move states, move my family. That part stays the same. But whether you're in football, basketball, baseball, it's just it's a different job, it's a different industry. And everybody's trying to figure out, like, ‘okay, how does this work and what's the appropriate way?’ And nobody necessarily has all the answers because this just happened and so there's not a lot of data on, okay, what's the best way to go about it? And so like when the portal began, I didn't take another job. I was already in a job and one of our thought processes was, well, let's get as many good players as we can from the portal who are the youngest best players, so that they will have eligibility remaining. And then, as it unfolded, hey, let's make sure we develop great relationships with the young men and their families, because maybe part of the niche we can create is once someone arrives, no matter where they arrive from or what age they are, we want them to stay and we want to have a plan and a vision for their development that we all are on the same page - the staff, the kid, the players, the families, their coaches, their agents. Because if you're constantly turning over your roster, no matter how good the player or how good your plan is, if it's ever changing relative to the people, that's hard to build continuity. Since all of this has started, we had among the lower transfer rates in the country. Is that because we had the best players? No, The best coaches? No. But I think the vision and the plan was very similar. And so when you take a job, and you've never taken a job in this era of athletics, how do you want to do it? Do you want to sign all players from the portal? Do you want to sign all guys that are going into their senior year? Do you want to sign some freshmen? And so you never know, because it's all happening at warp speed, but we've just tried to maybe diversify as best we can while not sacrificing the character and the work ethic and what we want our program to be about relative to the intangibles and so where are we? I don't know. Do I think our decision-making matrix, we kind of went about it in a systematic way, even though it was happening really, really fast? I think we did, but there's no way for me to compare. Hey, when you left Marquette and went to Virginia Tech, what was it like and when you left Virginia Tech and went to Texas A&M? What was it like when you left A&M and came to Maryland? What was it like? Well, it was different than all of them, not because anything is wrong, and not because I'm complaining, it's just because that's what the industry has become.

On what kind of team will take the floor in November

“Sure, we probably handle the summers a little differently. But I would say that probably all coaches would stay the same if asked that question. Maybe how you would utilize the eight weeks you can work in the summer ten years ago is different than how you would utilize the summer now. I think when you take a job and you have to put together an entire roster, I think then the summer changes even more. And I don't know if we went about this the right way. Although we're in week six of eight, I kind of think that we have gained some traction. Number one, most importantly, in my opinion, is the relationship category. I want to spend some time with these guys. A lot of the things that players say about me, it's just because they're good people, and they're covering up a lot of my deficiencies to be kind. But I also think there is an element of my willingness to give my time to them to invest in their life. Yeah, every now and then we'll talk about dribbling better or trying to shoot a different ball, but more importantly, who they are as young men and who they're going to become. I try to invest most of my time in the summer in getting to know who they are, what's important to them, what they like, what they don't like. How can I help them? What are their trigger points? And you can only do that through time. And so we utilized our first three weeks. We never practiced five on five whatsoever just because I wanted to be in the gym. I wanted to sweat with them. I wanted to actually learn their game. I think part of our jobs as coaches is to put our teams in positions to be successful. And sometimes you can have a system and you always get the best players, and that's okay. I think, for the path that I have been on, I think my job is to adjust how we coach based on our personnel. And so the first three weeks of June that we worked, it was a lot of skill work with one guy, occasionally with two. Every now and then, we would do with three guys. Once every two weeks, we would do it with fours. Just to hey, I want to learn who they are. I want to learn their pace. I want to learn their motor. I want to learn how they think. I want to learn how they listen. And then, as we have kind of unfolded the month of July, a lot of it's just been discovery. Discovery on hey with this work relative to our roster. And so we call them OTAs, just like you hear in the NFL, organized team activity, and we just take one portion of what we're thinking about doing on offense and really drill down on that. Clips on that, numbers on that, take notes on that, show them film on that, and then do that only that aspect on the floor. And if that fleshed out appropriately, go into OTA number two and build on it. If it didn't flesh out the right way, we go into OTA number two and try something else. And so we've had six offensive OTAs thus far. We're off on Wednesdays, which is why I'm doing this with you now. And then we start our first defensive OTA tomorrow, and so we'll start at Ground Zero tomorrow, and what we do defensively, and there's a little bit of we're more convicted on what we want to do defensively because of not because of our personnel, but just because of how we want to play, but offensively, we're still trying to try to maybe connect some dots on does this make sense relative to our roster? Should we expand that? Should we eliminate that? So those six OTAs, our guys were great. We made some progress, and then we're going to try to do the same thing as we start defensive OTAs tomorrow.”

When Buzz Williams expects to learn more about his time on the court

“Yeah, I think again. I hope this is not cooked out and put on the internet where it comes across in the wrong sort of tone of voice or our word usage. I think when you have a brand new team, every day is a brand new day. And it's a brand new day, whether it's the summer, it's a brand new day, whether it's the fall, whether it's non-conference, whether it's conference. I think that I like and I'm getting better at knowing who our group is. And I think one of the things that we've tried to do at appropriate times is try to teach all of us, not just the players, teach everyone on the staff some of the history that you know about the program, that you know about the institution. I think part of what may has made Maryland so great for so long from a sustainability standpoint, is not just the care and not just the support, but if you talk to this player or this coach from 20 years ago or ten years ago, there is a connection. And I think we, as all of us are brand new, we need to get involved in understanding the history. I just had lunch. I never eat lunch. And I had lunch because I had a visitor. I had two people that I hadn't met that came to campus and I had lunch with them, and they were telling me, and you probably know this, that this is the first time they believe in at least a decade that Georgetown and Maryland have played.”

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