Buzz Williams wants to show maturity as a head coach by ignoring NCAA

Texas A&M head coach Buzz Williams very much sounds like a man who is keeping his mind focused on the right things and in the right areas in order to maximize his team’s success. Like a lot of things in life, that can be easier said than done. Especially after his program was put on two years’ probation in the fall of 2021. It’d be easy for him to be emotionally bitter over the situation, but during his most recent press conference, Williams spoke like a man with great emotional discipline. He didn’t want to talk about the NCAA and politics, but instead wanted to focus his energy in more positive areas.

Buzz Williams spoke like a man with great emotional discipline

“No. No. I’ve tried to mature. I don’t want to get into politics. I don’t want to have anxious thoughts. I want to be really careful in the words that I say publicly and I’m trying to really make sure that I’m efficient and effective with the words that I use with our team. I think the thing that I have to make sure that I lead on, I literally just talked to our team about this. Is we’re writing a figurative book. And it’s just human nature to want to talk about the words that we’ve already written. But it would be foolish of us not to give our very best on the current chapter that we’re writing. And we’ll see what happens towards the end,” Williams said.

“But let’s put ourselves in a position to earn everything, instead of leaving it up to public opinion and seeking the praise and the applause of others. Let’s just edit our own book amongst ourselves and see if we can continue to get better. This is week six. We’re at plus three. We’re so thankful for the crowd that we’ve had the last four games. We don’t win against Vanderbilt if we don’t have the crowd that we had in the second half. And we for sure don’t win tonight,” Williams explained.

He’s likely referencing the heartbreak of last season, where the Aggies finished with an overall record of 23-12 and 9-9 record in the SEC. Texas A&M suffered the devastating feeling of being left out of the 2022 NCAA Tournament, despite making a spectacular run all the way to the 2022 SEC Championship Game. The Aggies head coach wants his team to leave nothing to chance and doesn’t want them living an anxiety filled life on the bubble.

“Every team’s going through this in February. It requires an enormous amount of emotional energy. And when we give, or when Buzz gives his emotional energy to somebody that’s not writing the book, then I’m not doing right by our group,” the Texas A&M head coach said.

“And so, we’re thankful we swept Florida. We know that. We swept Auburn. We know that. We know that in the middle of February, we’re playing four mirror games in a row. It’s a mini mirror season. I believe we’ve lost one game to a mirror opponent and that was at Arkansas. And the four mini mirror seasons, I think two of them are on the road and two of them are at home. Is that right? And so, we’re playing for plus four on Saturday and we need a minimum of plus four to end the regular season. It’s week six. We’re off tomorrow. And we play Tuesday, Saturday this week. Then, I think next week we play Wednesday, Saturday,” Williams noted.

“The last transition we had in the last week of January, Wednesday, Saturday to Tuesday, Saturday, I think we lost at Arkansas on that Tuesday. So, we need to be better in the transition this upcoming week, but before we get to that, we need to fill ourselves up physically, mentally, and emotionally tomorrow. And then be our best to have a chance to sweep LSU,” Williams said.

Texas A&M currently sits at 17-7 overall for the 2022-2023 season. Next up, they’ll face the LSU Tigers on Saturday, February 11th. Tip-off for that one is slated for 8:30 PM EST and the game will be televised by the SEC Network.