Not long after he accepted Maryland’s offer to become its next men’s basketball coach this past spring, Buzz Williams was speaking with then-interim athletic director Colleen Sorem about the upcoming schedule. When Sorem revealed Marquette was set to be an opponent early this season, Williams turned to prayer.
During those intensely personal moments of reflection and faith, Williams sought guidance on how best to handle what figured to be an emotional homecoming to the school where he became the head coach of a high major program for the first time.
Not long after he accepted Maryland’s offer to become its next men’s basketball coach this past spring, Buzz Williams was speaking with then-interim athletic director Colleen Sorem about the upcoming schedule. When Sorem revealed Marquette was set to be an opponent early this season, Williams turned to prayer.
During those intensely personal moments of reflection and faith, Williams sought guidance on how best to handle what figured to be an emotional homecoming to the school where he became the head coach of a high major program for the first time.
Williams went from relative obscurity in the coaching industry to a rising star, directing the Golden Eagles to five straight NCAA tournament berths from 2009 to 2013 and setting the stage for a journey in which he steadied two other programs, Virginia Tech and Texas A&M, before arriving in College Park with a similar mandate.
Maryland’s game against Marquette on Saturday afternoon at Fiserv Forum marks the first time Williams will be back in Milwaukee since he departed for the Hokies in 2014.
“I should not have gotten that job, by any stretch of the imagination,” said Williams, who served one season as an assistant at Marquette before his promotion at age 35. “I did not take that [assistant coaching] job thinking I was going to be the head coach. There were three or four people that had really big guts that stepped out of their comfort zone to make a decision to hire me. …
“That decision by those decision-makers completely changed the life that my children have lived. There were a lot of people that were mentoring me and helping me in all of the deficiencies that I had … and so I’ve benefited from that, which is potentially what eventually led to every other job that I’ve had.”
Williams has Tom Crean to thank at the top of the list.
Crean was the coach at Marquette in 2007, and he offered an open assistant coaching position to Williams. It didn’t matter that Williams was embroiled in a legal dispute with the University of Louisiana System at the time, stemming from his abrupt resignation from the University of New Orleans after one season as head coach, during which he compiled a 14-17 record.
Crean had become a fervent admirer of Williams’s recruiting acumen, citing his “character, integrity and talent.” As Texas A&M’s recruiting coordinator from 2004 through 2006, Williams had a hand in assembling highly rated freshman classes. The thinking was if Williams could attract top-tier talent to College Station, Texas, he would have no trouble doing the same in a larger market.
When Crean left Marquette in 2008 to take over at Indiana, Williams received what he termed a transformational offer from then-athletic director Steve Cottingham to become the Golden Eagles’ coach. The move to hire Williams was stunning, given other reported candidates included more accomplished young coaches such as Tony Bennett, Sean Miller and Brad Stevens.
Cottingham had indicated there would be no search committee because school officials chose to keep the process in-house, leaving a puzzled fan base to question the decision on message boards. Williams won over his skeptics, leading the Golden Eagles to the Sweet 16 in 2011 and 2012 and to the Elite Eight in 2013.
His recruiting chops brought in players such as Jimmy Butler, Jae Crowder, Vander Blue, Darius Johnson-Odom and Dwight Buycks. But winning on the court and along the recruiting trail was only part of what provided an abundance of joy for Williams at Marquette.
He counts the founding of his charity, “Buzz’s Bunch,” as another fond memory. The initiative connects special needs children with one another through a basketball game in the fall and a clinic over the summer. “Buzz’s Bunch” has grown to more than 500 members in the cities where he has served as a head coach.
Williams also established bonds with his assistants at Marquette that remain uncommonly strong to this day. Three of his assistants with the Golden Eagles followed Williams to Maryland, including associate head coach Devin Johnson, who is responsible for overseeing the Terps’ defense. Lyle Wolf and Aki Collins were on Williams’s staff at Marquette as well.
“The most important thing is loyalty,” Johnson said of his relationship with Williams over 14 seasons as his assistant. “The loyalty Coach Buzz and I have for one another means we are family.”
The Terps were scheduled to arrive Friday night in Milwaukee, and although Williams and his staff would be busy reviewing film and discussing additional strategy for Maryland’s first true road game this season, Williams said his wife, Corey, had plans to reconnect with longtime friends from when the family resided in the city.
A self-proclaimed creature of habit, almost to the point of inflexibility, Williams always has embraced the minutiae of his professional obligations, meaning virtually no leisure time for himself — much like when his coaching career took off at Marquette and he would organize his days into three-minute increments.
Sentimentality might be unavoidable on game day, however, when one of his former Marquette players, Jerel McNeal, is set to have his jersey raised to the rafters. Other former charges under Williams are scheduled to attend the ceremony, too.
“We’ll handle it the right way,” Williams said of the logistics. “After what we’re doing on a daily basis here, my energy and emotion will be consumed with, ‘Can we figure out how to do the things that are important here?’”
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