If Buzz Williams harbored any doubts about the rebuilding process he faced with the Texas A&M men’s program, a November trip to the Orlando Invitational provided evidence.
The Aggies lost three straight games to Harvard, Temple and Fairfield, finishing last in the field. Last week, after A&M’s season ended prematurely with a 16-14 record, Williams recalled that early-season tournament and the message he delivered afterward.
“I told them after we got beat by Fairfield, ‘Congratulations guys. We finished in last place at the DisneyWorld Classic and I would say we are the worst power five team in the country,’“ Williams said on a teleconference after the end of the season.
The point is debatable about where A&M stood then, although the Aggies were certainly among the worst power conference teams in the country.
At the same time, Williams saw the tournament performance as having “flushed out whatever residue of junk was left,” not only for a team, but for Williams.
People had wondered about his move from Virginia Tech to A&M, just as they had when he jumped from Marquette to Virginia Tech. And while A&M had gone to two NCAA Sweet 16s under former coach Billy Kenney, it was 6-12 in the SEC in 2018-19.
Williams decided to turn the stigma from the Orlando tourney into a bit of motivation, telling his team they were now liberated.
“There’s freedom in what happened because now everybody knows we’re bad,” Williams said. “So now there’s only one way to go — up.”
By the end of Williams’ first season as A&M head coach, the Aggies had finished 10-8, winning five of their last seven games with a victory at then No. 17 Auburn.
A run into the SEC tournament was viewed as a distinct possibility. It never came. Just after a walkthrough at the team hotel, Williams returned to his room. Before the door shut, his wife broke the news that the tournament had been canceled by concerns over the coronavirus.
“This pause, we can’t control it,” Williams said. “But it couldn’t have ended on a better note.”
While never an offensive juggernaut — the Aggies ranked last in the SEC in scoring and field-goal percentage — A&M became a more efficient team later in the season. And the effort was a near constant.
“I say we have just changed by buying into what the coaches want us to do, staying together as a unit,” said senior forward John Nebo, the team’s leading scorer at 12.5 points per game.
“Nobody splits when we have struggled, we all just stay together and kept listening to the coaches and what they wanted us to do. The coaching staff never gave up on us, we just figured out ways to win.”
Despite the lack of closure on the season, Williams sees A&M having made a remarkable amount of progress in his first year, almost like multiple seasons.
“I think the thing I’m most excited about is everyone in our program is excited about how we go about things,” Williams said. “I think everyone in the program who will be part of the program going forward is very aware of that process, they’re very comfortable with that process.
“They embrace that. You don’t typically find that maybe as strongly as what we were able to do over the last 50 or 60 days. Our guys got to the point where they wanted to work, they were excited to work — whether that was in the film room, whether that was in practice.”
Find more Texas A&M stories from The Dallas Morning News here.
