Buzz Williams' Ags continue search for win column against No. 1 Tigers

Florida handed Texas A&M a fourth straight loss as Buzz Williams and the Aggies continue to search for the win column. As the SEC gauntlet rolls on, the head coach joined TexAgs Live to discuss A&M's toughest test yet vs. No. 1 Auburn on Tuesday night.

Key notes from Buzz Williams interview

• I think you learn a lot in all of this, whether the results are good or bad. A credit to our staff. I think they've been very receptive to those lessons and trying to apply those lessons as we enter the last week of SEC play. I thought we played incredibly hard at Florida. Unbelievable environment. College GameDay was there. Florida is a really good team.
   
• It's a one, two, three-possession game, most of the game. We bring it to within six. Something about the 8:00 mark, we did not do a good enough job on the defensive glass. They beat us to too many balls. Our first-shot defense was fine. We just didn't finish with the rebound. That was the first time in 15 games that we had been beat on the glass. We still shot more balls. We still shot more free-throws. We did some good things. We just didn't do well enough to beat the third-best team in the country according to the metrics that matter. It was our lowest defensive rebound percentage since we played Alabama. That was why we lost by six to Alabama. They just beat us on the glass. I thought that was the difference. Our guys were great yesterday in getting ready for tomorrow's game, and I anticipate they'll be great again today.
   
• In the last three games, the amount of 3-pointers made is at a high percentage. Florida was averaging 27 triples a game. They shot 33. The 3-pointers they shot in the first half were off of middle penetration. We changed some of the coverages at halftime. They shot 12 in the second half. A couple of those came off of middle penetration, but several of those did come off of offensive rebound pitch-out dagger-type shots.
   
• Tennessee and their 3-pointers...Vanderbilt’s Tyler Nickel made seven 3-pointers. We have awareness to those level of players. We give a specific language. Our premise in how we guard those guys is different, relative to how they score and how they shoot. There will be some of that that applies tomorrow against Auburn. The second-half would have been dagger 3-pointers against Florida. Our premise defensively is to try and keep the ball on the side, and too many times the ball got to the middle, which all of the sudden the ball is in the middle, and your defense is most vulnerable.
   
• We didn't do a good job preventing them from getting middle in the first half, and we were better at that in the second-half. Fourteen 3-pointers made is a very high percentage. One of the stats we chart is contested 3-point percentage. We also break down if those 3-pointers are catch-shoot, or are they off the bounce?
   
• We need to play better. That's for sure. The blame should be on me. We've been ranked every weekend this season. I think we have played a schedule that suggests if we have success we should be ranked every weekend this season. Texas A&M has played 113 years of basketball, and that's only happened one time prior to this year. That was in 2006-2007. I am disappointed, as our players, as our coaches, over the last two weeks. They have handled all of this with great maturity and great character.
   
• The expectations from the outside, and how disappointed everyone is, and we acknowledge that. We are very respectful of everyone's opinion. I think there are a lot of lessons that have come from the last two weeks, and we don't want to fast-forward to the postseason. We need to be our best, and that includes me, our coaches and our players. The results in the last four games have not been what we want them to be. In the organization, there has been great accountability on how we can improve. We want to be the best that we can be as we get into March. We did fall two spots in the numbers that matter in losing to Florida. We play the No. 1 team tomorrow. They've lost one conference game, to Florida, and they lost at Duke. From a metrics standpoint, it's another great opportunity. We need to continue to improve.
   
• I pray a lot to make sure that the words that I say have high humility and zero arrogance. I'm not disappointed or upset in anybody's reaction because I'm unaware of it, because I don't participate in all of those things. Our schedule overall, thus far through the 29 games we've played, is top-10 in the country. That's never happened in the history of Texas A&M.
   
• Specific to the last six games of the season, it's the toughest schedule in the country. This is week 20 of basketball season. I absolutely adore the 106 years of experience of the people on my staff. I absolutely admire, respect and love, regardless of result, the young men who are in our program. I'm aware of every scenario because of my relationships with their families. I have done my best to educate our players on how to handle themselves publicly, how to handle themselves privately and how to handle themselves on social media. It's just the exposure that comes with it.
   
• If you're not comfortable with the exposure, then you probably have to do something else. When you leave here, if you stay in this industry, the exposure is never going to change. There have been a lot of lessons that we have learned when we were winning, and there are a lot of lessons over the last two weeks when we have lost. We're going to keep trying to do our best.
   
• We need everybody to be their best, and we need everybody to understand the concepts relative to what we have created. We understand who Auburn is, and statistically speaking, they are the best college basketball team that there has been in the year span since 2006-2007. Would it jolt us? I don't know that jolt is the right word because I think our guys are very aware of what is required to be our best. Collectively, we have not been our best, and individually, some of us have not been our best.