Buzz: We need to focus less on our opponents and more on us

Key notes from Buzz Williams interview

• Everyone is processing Kobe’s death differently, whether that’s me or you or our team, the people he worked with. I’m not saying I went about handling Kobe Bryant’s passing the right way with our group, but yesterday we were scheduled at 3:00 to watch film, and we watched several interviews with Kobe Bryant instead. We were just taking notes, listening, watching, and trying to learn how he lived his life, his career, and his craft. I’m fortunate to have been able to have interacted with Kobe and have developed good relationships with the people who have been a big part of his career. And not to take away from Kobe, his daughter, or his wife who is still alive, but my wife just texted me this morning about the other families who were impacted, children who will grow up without their parents.
   
• I’m not exactly sure what the right response is other than how fragile all of this is. It gives you a glimpse of what truly is important. I think that maybe shocks you emotionally. Hopefully, it shocks you in every aspect of your life that whatever you believe to be most important, that your daily itinerary shows that and your priorities you live that out. Yesterday is a stark reminder, specifically in basketball, how fragile life is, and how important the people in our life should be because you never know. 
   
• Since Christmas, we’ve been gaining traction in the things we think are essential. We played our worst game on Saturday, statistically. This was relative to our effort and how connected we were. We have reverted back to how we were at the beginning of the season and I’m not exactly sure why. But all of the things post-Christmas, I thought we were going in a really great trajectory.
   
• Saturday afternoon, it felt like for whatever reason it was a November game again. We’ll have to figure out if we can, how that happened if we can get back to where we were. Our effort was not near what it has to be. The things we have to be able to execute and produce as best as possible was not there. I think we have come a long way and hopefully, we can get back to being blue-collar in regards to how we compete on Tuesday against Tennesse.
   
• I think change is hard and the transition is hard. Doing things differently than what you’ve done before takes a lot of different things to break those habits. In many respects, our kids have been very respectful and very responsive, even though they were going down a path they have never been down before. I don’t know if I do a great job, other than I just tell them the truth. I’ve learned over time that the truth is just the best way to go about things.
   
• There’s not a trick in what we are trying to do. I think we’ve come a long way and it all went away on Saturday for whatever reason. So now we’re at, how can we bring it back to life? We’re (3-4) in the month of January, can we finish at Tennesee with a third road win in the SEC in this month. We’ve got a long way to go to get to where we want to get.
   
•  As I mentioned before, our players’ parents have done an incredible job raising them because they’ve been extremely respectful and responsive to what we are asking them to do. Our staff has done a great job of finding ways of how to break it down to its simplest form and then build it back up, whether it be on the floor. We are trying to walk them through without going full speed, as time has transpired, our execution level has improved. On Saturday, it all just went away. We will have steps back in our execution, but we can’t have steps back in our energy and effort.
   
• Half the games are at home, and half the games are on the road in January. We are trying to walk a delicate line of what they need to know in relating to the opponent and what we know and then probably the third would be, where are we at relative to those first two and how can we add a new wrinkle to what we’re doing. We’ve tried to decrease the amount that we spend on the opponent and increase the time we spend on us and see if we can add to us. Adding to us has been really good. You forget that none of this works on either side of the ball unless we play at an elite level with fire energy.