Buzz Williams was named Maryland basketball’s head coach on April 1, inheriting a team that would be dismantled over the course of the ensuing weeks. A combination of the transfer portal and expiring eligibility
paved the way for nearly the entire roster to depart the program, just as previous head coach Kevin Willard already had.
And while Williams certainly had a tough task ahead of him — the journey to assemble a competitive Big Ten basketball team — his job may not have been as tough as it would have been for another coach in his shoes. As it turned out, Williams didn’t need to hard sell the allure of playing for the Terps, or hitting shots in Xfinity Center in front of raucous crowds — though that probably helped.
Instead, Williams simply needed to sell himself.
“I knew I wanted to be with Buzz,” guard Diggy Coit said. “And I just like how [Texas A&M] played. I like everything that people said about [Williams]. They all said the same thing about him, how consistent he was as a man, how he builds character and his players.”
Coit, a Kansas transfer, believed Williams to be the perfect fit for him — not just for his play style, but because he knew that Williams would challenge him in ways he hadn’t been before at other schools.
Some of those challenges have already been explicitly put into action, with Williams’ implementation of a summer “boot camp.” This provided his players’ conditioning to prepare them for the grueling Big Ten slate, a conference unfamiliar to much of the team.
But instead of reacting negatively to Williams’ boot camp, his players bought into the idea completely, praising their head coach for the decision.
“I would definitely say boot camp has had a positive impact on us,” forward Elijah Saunders said. “It’s a great way to get to know your teammates fast and how they compete, how they are when things get hard, and who’s a natural leader.”
One of those natural leaders is senior center Pharrel Payne, who played under Williams at Texas A&M. The Aggies’ most productive player in last year’s March Madness was extremely trusting and outspoken in his support of Maryland’s new head coach. He was the first to commit to the Terps in the spring, despite so much uncertainty surrounding the rest of the program.
“I think [Williams] knows what to do to get the job done…getting the team together, establishing a foundation and building off of that,” Payne said. “I would say as far as building our culture and building our team up, I think things are the same [as Texas A&M].”
Alongside his coaching, Williams’ high-character human qualities were also imperative for many of the new commits. Freshman Jaziah Harper lauded Williams’ ability to connect with his players, and spoke glowingly of his ability to coach up players who went on to play at the highest of levels. But when asked at media day what most drew him to Williams, he pinpointed the coach’s humility as the largest factor.
Williams’ human side was specifically mentioned by some of the other Texas A&M players who have gotten to know him quite well. Transfer forward George Turkson Jr. called Williams a “human coach,” and emphasized that Williams is a great life teacher.
Perhaps nothing embodied that sentiment more than Williams’ walks with all four of the Aggies’ transfers before he accepted the head coaching position at Maryland — he wanted to be candid about his situation.
But he didn’t just allocate that treatment to his former players. Indiana transfer Myles Rice, who projects to be a linchpin and significant contributor at guard this year, had a similar experience. Williams’ revealed that on Rice’s official visit to Texas A&M, which nearly overlapped his switch to Maryland, he invited Rice and Rice’s two parents to his house.
Williams didn’t want to leave Rice high and dry.
“I didn’t try to recruit Myles to come to Maryland,” Williams said. “That wasn’t the intent of the conversation. But I knew within a couple hours, if I was taking that job, that my family and I would be on a plane, and he would still be on a visit to Texas A&M.”
Ultimately, Williams’ transparency, down-to-earth attitude and approach to coaching made him a destination setting for the members of this year’s squad. Count on him to have even more success in this regard as the years go by.
“[Our staff] was among the lowest in the country at the Power Four level in relation to transfer rate,” Williams said. “We’re proud of that. It’s not once they arrive, wherever they arrive, it’s how you get them there.”
