Buzz Williams considers disparity between offensive rebounds, second-chance points

Following a disappointing loss to Arkansas on Tuesday night, Texas A&M head men’s basketball coach Buzz Williams tried to parse out how his team, one of the best offensive rebounding units in the country, could struggle so much at scoring second-chance points. Solutions did not readily present themselves to the coach.

In the 78-71 loss to the Razorbacks on Tuesday, Texas A&M pulled down 19 offensive rebounds, basically one more than the Aggies nation-leading 18.1 per game. And yet the second-chance point tally for Texas A&M in the loss? Seven points.

“I haven’t studied it enough,” Williams said shortly after the loss. “I’m trying to make sure I handle my brain and my words and my emotion the right way. I actually think, without having watched the tape, that not all of the rim shots were missed by our guards.”

Williams shared that this issue has been getting worked on behind the scenes for weeks now, but the fruits haven’t exactly been borne yet. Texas A&M is currently on a three-game losing streak and now sits at 15-11 with NCAA Tournament hopes hanging in the balance.

And given that the Aggies average, functionally, nearly 20 additional possessions per game via offensive rebounds, the opportunities are there for put-backs and extended possessions that lead to points. Williams and Co. are just in the process of figuring out what’s getting lost in translation, something far easier said than done.

Overall, Texas A&M probably isn’t aided by shooting less than 40% from the field, either. For a team that has, and will continue to hound the offensive glass, at some point in the not-too-distant future all that effort has to start paying off with easy buckets at the rim.

“Too many offensive rebounds — a lot of offensive rebounds, 46% of the time we rebounded the ball. Good number, above our average,” Williams said. “So when we get a rebound, offensive rebound in the paint, no matter who we are and no matter their presence at the rim, you probably can’t design anything to get it closer, but you have to finish at a higher rate than we did, collectively — Texas A&M does. So we have been working on that for the last two and half, three weeks. That’s the way we start practice every day, 12 minute finishing stations. We do get there a lot, but we have to finish at a higher rate.”