Buzz Williams: Roster retention has become ‘extremely hard,’ incredibly valuable

No. 8 Texas A&M won its fifth straight game on Saturday, topping Arkansas 69-61 to improve to 20-5 on the season and 9-3 in SEC play. Following the game, coach Buzz Williams launched into a three-minute explanation about how his team is built a little unconventionally in the day and age of NIL and the transfer portal.

In short, he’s managed to achieve some level of roster retention, which is increasingly becoming a rarity.

“I think its incredibly hard in what college athletics has become to do what we’re doing,” Buzz Williams said.

The most notable star on this year’s Texas A&M team is Wade Taylor, who is in his fourth year with the program. And it’s not that all the talent is homegrown; second-leading scorer Zhuric Phelps is an SMU transfer.

But by and large, Williams has a team that has worked together before prior to the 2024-25 season.

“I think it’s kind of cool that there’s a lot of guys in our program, young adults and old adults that if you still read the media guide — I know that doesn’t matter anymore either — you would see multiple people that you know that have created a niche and created and established themselves in kind of an old-school way,” Buzz Williams said. “And I know this is new school, but in many respects how we’re operating is old school. Just because that’s how my parents raised me. I think that’s kind of cool.”

That’s not to say Texas A&M has some secret formula for success. You still have to go out and win games each week.

However, it seems to be working for the Aggies.

“We do not have the best players. I am not a Hall of Fame coach, as I mentioned yesterday,” Buzz Williams said. “I tend to agree that no matter your talent level, if you all get together for the first time and pop firecrackers on July 4th you have not accumulated the reps of the group we have.

“And we’re not more talented than they are, and I’m not a better coach, but we have accrued a lot of reps that matter. And we’ve got our heads knocked in a bunch. But there’s great belief and trust and love and care and we’ve got a lot of people, the whole group, pulling in the same direction. So in real time there’s a lot of communication that is transparent, and that doesn’t happen a lot anymore.”

There’s a lot of basketball left to be played, but whatever Buzz Williams is doing right now is working. Texas A&M just keeps winning.

For that to continue, the players will have to continue working as a tight-knit unit. The stretch coming up includes a road trip to No. 22 Mississippi State and a home date against No. 5 Tennessee.

“We have to be present in this moment and try to figure out how we can get a little better tomorrow, because I anticipate that this upcoming week will probably be a little harder than the week that we just lived,” Williams said.