Buzz Williams faces questions on technical foul, free throw discrepancy vs. Texas

Texas rallied for a 70-69 win over Texas A&M on Saturday after trailing by 18 points at halftime. It was a comeback that was aided by a pair of technical fouls on Texas A&M in the second half.

The first one was called on Henry Coleman with about 16 minutes remaining in the game, while the second one was a technical foul substitution issue as Texas A&M had six players on the court as play started.

Texas A&M coach Buzz Williams was asked about the technical foul for having too many players on the court after the game.

“Yea, I think you’ll have to ask the coordinator of officials. That’s the best way for me to handle it,” Buzz Williams said.

While the Aggies did have six men on the court, the announcers blamed the officials for the miscue.

“Not only is that a technical foul for having six on the floor, that is a major miss by this officiating crew. One of the primary jobs of a three-man crew is to make sure there’s only five per team on the floor,” ESPN play-by-play caller Tom Hart said.

The technical foul ended up being extremely costly as Texas A&M was leading 64-52 when it was called. Texas made a pair of free throws from the tech to cut the lead to 10, then drilled a 3-pointer on the same possession to cut the lead to 64-57.

As a follow-up question, Buzz Williams was asked about the lack of free throw attempts for the Aggies. Texas A&M shot eight free throws for the entire game, while Texas attempted 16 in the second half alone.

“I’ll just recommend both questions that way,” Buzz Williams said. “I’m not being condescending. I just, I wanna be professional in every possible way. I wanna give credit to coach [Rodney] Terry. I want to give credit to their players. Incredible second half. And the making subs, I don’t know. I would have to read the rule book.”

While Williams did not want to get into specifics, he did acknowledge that Texas A&M had some breaks that went against them and struggled to bounce back. Yes, there was some bad luck, but the Aggies also made plenty of mistakes.

“We didn’t respond very well to it. And I would be at the front of the list for that. And I need to do a better job,” Williams said.