Williams intends to energize Texas A&M
COLLEGE STATION — In 216 days on the job, Texas A&M coach Buzz Williams says he escaped his new duties only one day: All of one mile from Reed Arena for his anniversary with his wife, Corey.
The couple stayed at a fancy hotel along University Drive. They worked out in the morning, enjoyed a massage and a movie in the afternoon, and dined at a steakhouse that evening.
“That’s the only day I remember being off,” Williams said. “I think we’ve been accountable for our time.”
That short albeit intense time at A&M leads to the Aggies’ opener under Williams at 7 p.m. Wednesday against Northwestern (La.) State in Reed Arena.
“This is my fourth ‘first’ game,” said Williams, a native Texan who has previously coached at New Orleans, Marquette and Virginia Tech. “I’m undeserving of any of those, and this is big
ger than any dreams I ever had. There have been thousands of people who have helped me along the way, when there was nothing I could do to help (in return).
“As I’ve gotten older, instead of thinking it’s about me … I’m trying to help others and help their careers the way people have helped me, because I’m for sure not here because of my talent. I get excited and I get anxious (for an opener), but probably in a different way than I once did.”
Williams, 47, is only a little more than seven months removed from his Virginia Tech squad pushing Duke to the limit in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament before losing by two points. Williams, a native of Van Alstyne north of Dallas, took over a perennial loser in Virginia Tech and led the Hokies to a school-record three consecutive NCAA Tournaments in his five seasons.
A&M athletic director Ross Bjork, hired last summer after Williams was brought onboard in March, said he was fortunate to inherit a “seasoned, experienced, championship-level coach” in Williams.
Williams served as an assistant from 2004-06 at A&M under then-coach Billy Gillispie, before heading to New Orleans in 2007. Under Gillispie and with plenty of input from Williams, the Aggies in 2006 made their first NCAA Tournament since 1987.
The deep-thinking Williams’ news conferences often better resemble philosophical symposiums, and on Monday he had each reporter in the Reed Arena interview room introduce themselves.
“So as this unfolds,” Williams said of the coming season and seasons, “I know who you are.”
Williams will mull the most basic of inquiries, and occasionally draws out his question-and-answer sessions in tremendous detail, in pulling back the curtain on his approach.
“I tell our guys that I’m not old, but I’m
not young,” Williams said. “I’m somewhere right in between.”
The roster Williams both inherited and cobbled together in a few months also is “somewhere right in between” — with eight freshmen and sophomores and seven juniors and seniors.
A&M fired Billy Kennedy last March after he missed the NCAA Tournament in six of his eight seasons, with two Sweet 16s to show for it in 2016 and 2018.
“We’re getting used to how Coach Buzz coaches,” said junior guard Jay Jay Chandler, a former Cinco Ranch standout. “All of us haven’t experienced a coach like that.”
Asked to expand on “a coach like that,” Chandler shrugged.
“You know Buzz — Coach Buzz is Coach Buzz,” Chandler said. “You can’t describe how he is. To experience how he is, you have to go through it.”
The media covering the SEC picked the Aggies to finish 12th out of the league’s 14 teams. Chandler vowed fans will note a considerable change in the players’ energy levels this season.
“I’m not saying we didn’t have energy last year, it’s just going to be a lot more energy,” he said. “People are going to see us play and say, ‘What are they doing?’ But we know what we’re doing.”
What the Aggies are doing is trying to return to the level of success they achieved under Gillispie and then Mark Turgeon in making a school-record six consecutive NCAA Tournaments from 2006-2011.
“There’s a commercial that says, ‘Knowing is half the battle,’ ” Williams said of the current state of his players’ knowledge.
He added that his new team knows what to do after about half a year under his tutelage, in terms of competing for a SEC title and making the NCAA Tournament.
“Now we’ve got to figure out the other half,” Williams said. “Now we have to do what we know.”
brent.zwerneman@chron.com twitter.com/brentzwerneman