Good point. Maryland basketball might be screwed.

Like anything, I think it's more complicated than that. Of course he was exactly like that here, even people that liked him as a coach like me were making fun of his cult by about halfway through his tenure here. But there's a lot of layers why it wasn't a big deal early on:

1 - The rules changed after he got here. It was a lot easier to give a coach some rope for a rebuild and weird culture bits when he was hired here in 2019. There was no immediate transfer eligibility. Buzz was stuck with the roster Kennedy left him with (plus his recruiting class) whether he wanted to be or not. It was easy to look at some of that stuff and think "well Kennedy's players weren't used to playing this hard, this is all part of that transformation."

2 - The COVID season - It seemed like we had things turned and headed in the right direction towards the end of year one, and then the program just completely fell apart during the covid year. And because of everything happening, nobody was that upset that we were terrible. People weren't so much mad, they just stopped caring, plenty of other things going on to focus on. Then McNeilly broke with the Buzz cult or he was excommunicated or something which meant we lost our best player to TCU.

3 - We almost made the tournament in 2022. About 3/4 of the way through the 2022 season, the Buzz tenure was on the brink. I remember posting on here after we lost to South Carolina that it was the first time the thought of "maybe this is really not going to work" really entered my head. Then we went on the lose four more games in a row, granted three to very good teams. Marcus Williams leaves the team. Whole thing was in shambles, but then we turned it around, rattled off some impressive wins including making the SEC Tournament championship, and then I think the NCAA snub bought him some rope with the fan base. For an offseason, it felt like we were all in the bunker together to some degree.

The biggest difference though between here and Maryland is that Maryland didn't want to lose their last coach, and Buzz isn't as good as he is. When we fired Kennedy we hoped that Buzz would immediately be successful by bringing Blackshear with him from Virginia Tech and making the good parts of the Kennedy team better, but it was always a possibility that we were headed for a program reset. He couldn't just bring his whole team though, even if he wanted to.

But now the rules are different. A program like Maryland doesn't want to build a culture brick by brick from the ground up. They want to make a splash in the portal and AT LEAST be competitive year one. So all of Buzz's bits just make him seem like a man out of time trying to coach like Hoosiers instead of modern basketball.

well those things about Buzz aren't going to get covered up there like they did here.

If Buzz was being cold to the AD and donors the last place you'd read that is on this site. And if it was posted it would be deleted immediately.

Our fan base is also very tolerant of losing. We'll say awe shucks its time to put things together. All a coach has to do is have 1 good year then we throw extensions at them. hell we got fans already saying that all Earley has to do now is make a regional, IE we've already lowered expectations.

Maybe, I think basketball is kind of an outlier and our turnover at AD made any of that hard to read into for the first part of his tenure. I don't think it was exactly a secret that there was beef within our athletic department and basketball program the last couple of years though right?

At some point you will learn that PCs and interviews DO NOT MATTER. There are too many examples of charismatic salesman who can't coach.

bobinator said:

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Maybe, I think basketball is kind of an outlier and our turnover at AD made any of that hard to read into for the first part of his tenure. I don't think it was exactly a secret that there was beef within our athletic department and basketball program the last couple of years though right?

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But was the beef because Buzz wanted it that way? Again why would there be a beef, what did Bjork do to make Buzz mad? Or did Buzz invent some slight to then create the us vs the world bubble inside of MBB program?

its like Buzz saying he wouldn't go out to eat or go to church because he'd get mobbed by fans or something like that. I don't buy any of that crap. I mean I guess if you saw Buzz and said he good luck tonight coach, then he'd take that as being bothered. But i can't imagine he was getting mobbed at church about the last 5 minutes of the saturday game.

I think we had perfect storm of a several oddball coaches, Jimbo, Schloss, Buzz and as AD that seemed to not care about meeting with his staff. But maybe Bjork feels it wasn't his staff to manage.

IDK, because we have no independent reporting on our AD in this town.

I think Buzz is in a whole different class of oddball from Jimbo and Schloss. And I don't know exactly what the issue was or how Buzz goes about it but it's also no secret he's had issues with every AD he's ever had.

The Buzz interviews early on talking about social issues and not practicing while we were terrible on the court was so bizarre. He wanted to be Pop/Kerr without the success.

Going from Kennedy to Buzz was such a depressing trajectory. Excited to move on from BK and excited about Buzz only to see a terrible product and be lectured as to why we don't understand values in life or on the court. We weren't going to part ways on our own with Buzz for a while. God doesn't care about Aggie basketball. But an Aggie prayed hard enough for Buzz to leave voluntarily and us to take a chance on Bucky.

It's hard to not enjoy watching someone as sanctimonious as Buzz fail. Is what it is.

Did Buzz talk about social issues? I'd probably argue this was one of the most annoying traits of his Buzz-ness is that he talked a lot without really saying anything on those subjects.

I think the closest you could get to pinning any sort of actual stance on social issues to Buzz is that we weren't on the court for the national anthem, but even that could go both ways depending on what you already want to believe. He's either too woke to make his team stand for the anthem or preventing any of his players from doing a political gesture.

whiryno said:

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The Buzz interviews early on talking about social issues and not practicing while we were terrible on the court was so bizarre. He wanted to be Pop/Kerr without the success.

Going from Kennedy to Buzz was such a depressing trajectory. Excited to move on from BK and excited about Buzz only to see a terrible product and be lectured as to why we don't understand values in life or on the court. We weren't going to part ways on our own with Buzz for a while. God doesn't care about Aggie basketball. But an Aggie prayed hard enough for Buzz to leave voluntarily and us to take a chance on Bucky.

It's hard to not enjoy watching someone as sanctimonious as Buzz fail. Is what it is.

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It wasn't a terrible product. Goodness people

We were a 4 seed last year. It was like a top 4ish team in the history of our school

People act like we were a clownshow for a half decade

GrayMatter said:

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Divining Rod said:

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aggie-1997 said:

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It is amazing how some of you just can't let go. He coached here, he left, move on.

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it's more amazing that you're unable to have fun with it.

Lighten up, Francis, this is a sports talk forum.

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We'd lighten up if we discussed better topics. The bashing Buzz talk is beating a dead horse at this point.

Why have fun at his expense? So we all feel better about what we have here? Really? This is where we are?

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something about 'rent free'

bobinator said:

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Like anything, I think it's more complicated than that. Of course he was exactly like that here, even people that liked him as a coach like me were making fun of his cult by about halfway through his tenure here. But there's a lot of layers why it wasn't a big deal early on:

1 - The rules changed after he got here. It was a lot easier to give a coach some rope for a rebuild and weird culture bits when he was hired here in 2019. There was no immediate transfer eligibility. Buzz was stuck with the roster Kennedy left him with (plus his recruiting class) whether he wanted to be or not. It was easy to look at some of that stuff and think "well Kennedy's players weren't used to playing this hard, this is all part of that transformation."

2 - The COVID season - It seemed like we had things turned and headed in the right direction towards the end of year one, and then the program just completely fell apart during the covid year. And because of everything happening, nobody was that upset that we were terrible. People weren't so much mad, they just stopped caring, plenty of other things going on to focus on. Then McNeilly broke with the Buzz cult or he was excommunicated or something which meant we lost our best player to TCU.

3 - We almost made the tournament in 2022. About 3/4 of the way through the 2022 season, the Buzz tenure was on the brink. I remember posting on here after we lost to South Carolina that it was the first time the thought of "maybe this is really not going to work" really entered my head. Then we went on the lose four more games in a row, granted three to very good teams. Marcus Williams leaves the team. Whole thing was in shambles, but then we turned it around, rattled off some impressive wins including making the SEC Tournament championship, and then I think the NCAA snub bought him some rope with the fan base. For an offseason, it felt like we were all in the bunker together to some degree.

The biggest difference though between here and Maryland is that Maryland didn't want to lose their last coach, and Buzz isn't as good as he is. When we fired Kennedy we hoped that Buzz would immediately be successful by bringing Blackshear with him from Virginia Tech and making the good parts of the Kennedy team better, but it was always a possibility that we were headed for a program reset. He couldn't just bring his whole team though, even if he wanted to.

But now the rules are different. A program like Maryland doesn't want to build a culture brick by brick from the ground up. They want to make a splash in the portal and AT LEAST be competitive year one. So all of Buzz's bits just make him seem like a man out of time trying to coach like Hoosiers instead of modern basketball.

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Good points, and additionally schools that are not traditionally good at basketball are typically happy with almost any success that a coach has.

So Buzz probably road the coat-tails of the Marquette run at Va Tech, and then rolled that into the Aggie job when he was starting to wear out the Va Tech welcome by coming 'back to Texas' which was an easy sell to an AD looking for a good fit.

Also, I think the whole 'Leader of Men' angle he tries to sell looks really good to Univ Presidents when there are so many scummy coaches out there like Beard (choker), Kiffin (cheats on wife, leaves programs high & dry), Petrino and several basketball coaches even like Bruce Pearl, who had a pretty terrible reputation when Auburn hired him.

This is especially true at a conservative school like A&M.

That being said, I think the Maryland job for Buzz will be like BCG at Kentucky.
It will be harder to get the high end guys to buy into your diving on the floor, out-work everyone plan.

Sometimes are you are better off being in the shadows of the major sport than the spotlight of being far and away the school's primary sport, where people DEMAND success.

Maryland only has basketball and they aren't gonna tolerate too many bad seasons.

I think he will get next year and maybe the 3rd year, but if the honeymoon is already over, then he better be in the tourney the next two years or he is sunk.

This thread is like a man married to a beautiful, kind woman that makes great sandwiches and the guy keeps talking about his crazy ex-wife.

re: bobinator - that may be true on the social issues. I don't have receipts, just remember thinking 'why don't we focus on basketball' after some of his earlier press conferences.

re: aggiecrew - I'm not saying his product wasn't successful, I just didn't like watching wrestling matches so didn't enjoy the product. Pepsi sells a lot, I also don't like that product. I thought we'd be much worse than we look in year 1 with Bucky, but I was always excited about what the product was going to be regardless of the success this year.

OldShadeOfBlue said:

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At some point you will learn that PCs and interviews DO NOT MATTER. There are too many examples of charismatic salesman who can't coach.

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and at some point you will learn what this thread is about. Maybe.

Quote:

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One of [Buzz Williams assistant] Chambers' projects is designing the program's 12 annual quote shirts. He finds a life lesson and thinks of creative ways to make it resonate with players and staff.

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After four job titles and three schools, Josh Chambers has evolved into an indispensable figure on Buzz Williams’ staff.https://t.co/YEWraftLdw

— The Diamondback (@thedbk) January 28, 2026

BQ_90 said:

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They'd be on the hook for 25+ million buyout

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That's enough to keep him in a new suit every day for the rest of his life.

Ag1188 said:

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Quote:

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One of [Buzz Williams assistant] Chambers' projects is designing the program's 12 annual quote shirts. He finds a life lesson and thinks of creative ways to make it resonate with players and staff.

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After four job titles and three schools, Josh Chambers has evolved into an indispensable figure on Buzz Williams’ staff.https://t.co/YEWraftLdw

— The Diamondback (@thedbk) January 28, 2026

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LOL. Amazing content.

BusterAg said:

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This thread is like a man married to a beautiful, kind woman that makes great sandwiches and the guy keeps talking about his crazy ex-wife.

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No. It isn't. It's like we had a coach who thought he was too good for A&M and was looking for two years to leave, left and he's stinking it up. That's what it's like.

We aren't allowed to criticize the coach while he's at A&M and when he leaves. Maybe we get our shots in for a week, but nothing else is allowed!!!

Wait - is Chambers the one who does all of the emojis in the social media posts? I always thought Buzz's wife ran those accounts.

Rec said:

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BQ_90 said:

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They'd be on the hook for 25+ million buyout

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That's enough to keep him in a new suit every day for the rest of his life.

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and the book of the month club

AggieCrew44 said:

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whiryno said:

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The Buzz interviews early on talking about social issues and not practicing while we were terrible on the court was so bizarre. He wanted to be Pop/Kerr without the success.

Going from Kennedy to Buzz was such a depressing trajectory. Excited to move on from BK and excited about Buzz only to see a terrible product and be lectured as to why we don't understand values in life or on the court. We weren't going to part ways on our own with Buzz for a while. God doesn't care about Aggie basketball. But an Aggie prayed hard enough for Buzz to leave voluntarily and us to take a chance on Bucky.

It's hard to not enjoy watching someone as sanctimonious as Buzz fail. Is what it is.

---

It wasn't a terrible product. Goodness people

We were a 4 seed last year. It was like a top 4ish team in the history of our school

People act like we were a clownshow for a half decade

---

Yeah

Buzz fielded some good teams the last couple of years here, he just sucked in the tournament because his teams always had issues shooting

It would have been so easy to upgrade last year's team. Send packing (some or all of) Solo, Carter, Hef, and and Manny and portal in more shooters to space the floor for Wade and Payne. Sky is the limit if Buzz had.

Buzz doesnt concern himself with shooters but rather his culture defense and philosopy

It works for him but also creates a ceiling

Exact opposite for Bucky...if the shots arent falling however we do have other shooters to excahnge on the floor

Than wasnt an option under Buzz


I dont hold Buzz in disregard like others right now just know it didnt work to get us to next level in NCAA tourney

NyAggie said:

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AggieCrew44 said:

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whiryno said:

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The Buzz interviews early on talking about social issues and not practicing while we were terrible on the court was so bizarre. He wanted to be Pop/Kerr without the success.

Going from Kennedy to Buzz was such a depressing trajectory. Excited to move on from BK and excited about Buzz only to see a terrible product and be lectured as to why we don't understand values in life or on the court. We weren't going to part ways on our own with Buzz for a while. God doesn't care about Aggie basketball. But an Aggie prayed hard enough for Buzz to leave voluntarily and us to take a chance on Bucky.

It's hard to not enjoy watching someone as sanctimonious as Buzz fail. Is what it is.

---

It wasn't a terrible product. Goodness people

We were a 4 seed last year. It was like a top 4ish team in the history of our school

People act like we were a clownshow for a half decade

---

Yeah

Buzz fielded some good teams the last couple of years here, he just sucked in the tournament because his teams always had issues shooting

---

We scored 79 and 95 in our last two tourney L's to a 1 seed and a 5 seed. Our defense letting us down was more of an issue in the tourney than scoring ironically. Michigan had a stretch last year where they scored on like 12 of 13 straight possessions. Just can't happen at that stage

Yeah the shooting sucked but it was actually a rare reason we lost a game (because we got so many second chances), especially last year

AggieCrew44 said:

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NyAggie said:

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AggieCrew44 said:

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whiryno said:

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The Buzz interviews early on talking about social issues and not practicing while we were terrible on the court was so bizarre. He wanted to be Pop/Kerr without the success.

Going from Kennedy to Buzz was such a depressing trajectory. Excited to move on from BK and excited about Buzz only to see a terrible product and be lectured as to why we don't understand values in life or on the court. We weren't going to part ways on our own with Buzz for a while. God doesn't care about Aggie basketball. But an Aggie prayed hard enough for Buzz to leave voluntarily and us to take a chance on Bucky.

It's hard to not enjoy watching someone as sanctimonious as Buzz fail. Is what it is.

---

It wasn't a terrible product. Goodness people

We were a 4 seed last year. It was like a top 4ish team in the history of our school

People act like we were a clownshow for a half decade

---

Yeah

Buzz fielded some good teams the last couple of years here, he just sucked in the tournament because his teams always had issues shooting

---

We scored 79 and 95 in our last two tourney L's to a 1 seed and a 5 seed. Our defense letting us down was more of an issue in the tourney than scoring ironically. Michigan had a stretch last year where they scored on like 12 of 13 straight possessions. Just can't happen at that stage

Yeah the shooting sucked but it was actually a rare reason we lost a game (because we got so many second chances), especially last year

---

We also had a pretty lengthy scoring drought in that Michigan game if I recall correctly.

Always felt like when we built a good lead we'd go cold for a long stretch and let the other team back in

We just had a propensity to take bad shots in key moments, at least that's how it felt

And we weren't consistently good at shooting free throws

did every game under Buzz have a long scoring droughts

AggieCrew44 said:

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NyAggie said:

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AggieCrew44 said:

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whiryno said:

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The Buzz interviews early on talking about social issues and not practicing while we were terrible on the court was so bizarre. He wanted to be Pop/Kerr without the success.

Going from Kennedy to Buzz was such a depressing trajectory. Excited to move on from BK and excited about Buzz only to see a terrible product and be lectured as to why we don't understand values in life or on the court. We weren't going to part ways on our own with Buzz for a while. God doesn't care about Aggie basketball. But an Aggie prayed hard enough for Buzz to leave voluntarily and us to take a chance on Bucky.

It's hard to not enjoy watching someone as sanctimonious as Buzz fail. Is what it is.

---

It wasn't a terrible product. Goodness people

We were a 4 seed last year. It was like a top 4ish team in the history of our school

People act like we were a clownshow for a half decade

---

Yeah

Buzz fielded some good teams the last couple of years here, he just sucked in the tournament because his teams always had issues shooting

---

We scored 79 and 95 in our last two tourney L's to a 1 seed and a 5 seed. Our defense letting us down was more of an issue in the tourney than scoring ironically. Michigan had a stretch last year where they scored on like 12 of 13 straight possessions. Just can't happen at that stage

Yeah the shooting sucked but it was actually a rare reason we lost a game (because we got so many second chances), especially last year

---

I was about to say, i feel like Buzz sucked at defense too often too. Wide open 3's.

The problem with our NCAA Tournament losses wasn't threes, it was fouling too much, especially against Michigan.

Michigan shot 43% from the field and 27% from 3 but shot 29/36 at the FT line. Houston shot 32% from 3.

"We let our opponents just take wide open threes" was one of the more ridiculous things about the Buzz era that people kept repeating.

Ag1188 said:

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AggieCrew44 said:

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NyAggie said:

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AggieCrew44 said:

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whiryno said:

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The Buzz interviews early on talking about social issues and not practicing while we were terrible on the court was so bizarre. He wanted to be Pop/Kerr without the success.

Going from Kennedy to Buzz was such a depressing trajectory. Excited to move on from BK and excited about Buzz only to see a terrible product and be lectured as to why we don't understand values in life or on the court. We weren't going to part ways on our own with Buzz for a while. God doesn't care about Aggie basketball. But an Aggie prayed hard enough for Buzz to leave voluntarily and us to take a chance on Bucky.

It's hard to not enjoy watching someone as sanctimonious as Buzz fail. Is what it is.

---

It wasn't a terrible product. Goodness people

We were a 4 seed last year. It was like a top 4ish team in the history of our school

People act like we were a clownshow for a half decade

---

Yeah

Buzz fielded some good teams the last couple of years here, he just sucked in the tournament because his teams always had issues shooting

---

We scored 79 and 95 in our last two tourney L's to a 1 seed and a 5 seed. Our defense letting us down was more of an issue in the tourney than scoring ironically. Michigan had a stretch last year where they scored on like 12 of 13 straight possessions. Just can't happen at that stage

Yeah the shooting sucked but it was actually a rare reason we lost a game (because we got so many second chances), especially last year

---

I was about to say, i feel like Buzz sucked at defense too often too. Wide open 3's.

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The wide open threes was such a myth. It's like people drilled that in their brains after year one (when they were legitimately horrific at defending them) and never let it go

The Penn state ordeal where the dude was just unconscious covered or not didn't help either

And as Bob said above, we fouled like crazy. Michigan run in the second half where they scored on like 12 of 13 possessions was mostly fouling and layups

I think the thing about it is that it was SOMETIMES true, like last year against Vandy, but it ignores the reality that if a team has that many shooters on the floor they're going to get shots up no matter what kind of defense you're running, especially when you have some weak spots on defense.

We had an elite defense last year despite having Wade Taylor on the floor like 34 minutes a game.

Buzz was a good coach here despite how disappointing he was.

He left us with nothing, even if he would have stayed. We are definitely better off this season because he left.

IMO, and I loved watching this guy, Solo was the perfect player personification of Buzz: Pretty good, had the talent to be better, disappointing he wasn't, and whether good or bad awkward and quirky as hell.

As for Maryland, unless he gets a lot more wins, I don't think Buzz's schtick will keep him employed there past next season.

AggieCrew44 said:

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whiryno said:

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The Buzz interviews early on talking about social issues and not practicing while we were terrible on the court was so bizarre. He wanted to be Pop/Kerr without the success.

Going from Kennedy to Buzz was such a depressing trajectory. Excited to move on from BK and excited about Buzz only to see a terrible product and be lectured as to why we don't understand values in life or on the court. We weren't going to part ways on our own with Buzz for a while. God doesn't care about Aggie basketball. But an Aggie prayed hard enough for Buzz to leave voluntarily and us to take a chance on Bucky.

It's hard to not enjoy watching someone as sanctimonious as Buzz fail. Is what it is.

---

It wasn't a terrible product. Goodness people

We were a 4 seed last year. It was like a top 4ish team in the history of our school

People act like we were a clownshow for a half decade

---

Exactly! Buzz's last 3 teams at A&M were quality teams that broke a bunch of Aggie basketball program records. I enjoyed a lot of those moments like knocking off a #1 ranked team for the first time in program history. Now that Buzz is gone, I no longer keep up with him. It's strange and creepy to watch those Ags still following his every move and celebrating each time he fails. Get a life!

AggieCrew44 said:

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Ag1188 said:

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AggieCrew44 said:

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NyAggie said:

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AggieCrew44 said:

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whiryno said:

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The Buzz interviews early on talking about social issues and not practicing while we were terrible on the court was so bizarre. He wanted to be Pop/Kerr without the success.

Going from Kennedy to Buzz was such a depressing trajectory. Excited to move on from BK and excited about Buzz only to see a terrible product and be lectured as to why we don't understand values in life or on the court. We weren't going to part ways on our own with Buzz for a while. God doesn't care about Aggie basketball. But an Aggie prayed hard enough for Buzz to leave voluntarily and us to take a chance on Bucky.

It's hard to not enjoy watching someone as sanctimonious as Buzz fail. Is what it is.

---

It wasn't a terrible product. Goodness people

We were a 4 seed last year. It was like a top 4ish team in the history of our school

People act like we were a clownshow for a half decade

---

Yeah

Buzz fielded some good teams the last couple of years here, he just sucked in the tournament because his teams always had issues shooting

---

We scored 79 and 95 in our last two tourney L's to a 1 seed and a 5 seed. Our defense letting us down was more of an issue in the tourney than scoring ironically. Michigan had a stretch last year where they scored on like 12 of 13 straight possessions. Just can't happen at that stage

Yeah the shooting sucked but it was actually a rare reason we lost a game (because we got so many second chances), especially last year

---

I was about to say, i feel like Buzz sucked at defense too often too. Wide open 3's.

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The wide open threes was such a myth. It's like people drilled that in their brains after year one (when they were legitimately horrific at defending them) and never let it go

The Penn state ordeal where the dude was just unconscious covered or not didn't help either

And as Bob said above, we fouled like crazy. Michigan run in the second half where they scored on like 12 of 13 possessions was mostly fouling and layups

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Buzz is more a packline defense guy, which worked better prior to the modern era of basketball.

He still got the guys to work really hard. So that still helped in getting more shots contested, despite the flawed overall game plan.

I also remember the first couple years Buzz talked about some sort of "cover 2?" defense. I want to say the over rotating with that gave up more wide open looks.