Buzz Williams says early lack of fight & togetherness hurt Ags at Memphis

Texas A&M dropped a hard-fought battle at Memphis on Saturday night as the Aggies fell to 6-4 in non-conference play. During Monday's edition of TexAgs Radio, head coach Buzz Williams joined to look back on the road trip and analyze where the Maroon & White came up short.

Key notes from Buzz Williams interview

• Was that Creedence Clearwater Revival? How do I listen to TexAgs? Is this on the internet or a radio station? I need to figure out how to listen to you guys coming in and out of breaks because whoever the DJ is, he is much better than the host. I know that I'm older than Nuño, so I would be more familiar with Olin's playlist. Olin might have been at Woodstock when CCR was there.
   
• This biggest issue was we were not tough enough or competitive enough from start to finish. We did not have the edge or togetherness you have to have to win that game. We have a lot of numbers that were good. We scored 79 points on the road and made a bunch of free throws. The fight we had in the second 100 minutes was much different than the first 100 minutes. The head coach has to find a way to get them to play the full 200 minutes the way they played the final 100 minutes. There were a few things in the second half that weren't great, but there were things that were markedly different from one half to the second.
   
• We gave away 90 seconds of talking about CCR, so I apologize. I rarely get to talk about things that are not my job, so when I get the opportunity, I like to partake in the conversation. We like to play music as a staff where you have to name the song title, artist and year. That's not a hobby, but it does take my brain to a different place, which is fun.
   
• In my career as a head coach, this is the worst record I've had in non-conference, but it is distinctly the most difficult schedule we have played thus far.
   
• I could rattle off a bunch of numbers that show the difference from half to half, but I had three different categories that I made our players chart. I looked at the game from those three categories from start to finish. In each clip, our guys had to keep score, Memphis vs. Texas A&M, in each of those categories. Even if you don't want to pay attention to numbers, the feel and the spirit were completely different in the second half. Like I told them at halftime, we cannot wait until we're embarrassed for our fight to prevail. We have to enter with that type of fight. I thought we were really good in the second half, and you could argue it was our best half of the season.
   
• We had 12 offensive rebounds in the second half. We rebounded 75 percent of our misses in that half. We still had 11 turnovers, and we have to solve that. In the game, 51 percent of our shots were at the rim. We shot 43 percent on those shots. It's hard to win when you only make 43 percent of your shots at the rim. We did a lot of good things, but there are still some numbers we have to calm down.
   
• The prevailing feeling as we left was making sure that the priority is how we can fight, pull and scrap in the same direction, regardless of locale and opponent. We have to do that from start to finish.
   
• We don't have enough margin to try and give away minutes while trying to find who is going to play really hard. Maybe the solution is to shorten the rotation. We'll figure it out.