When it comes to coaching men’s basketball, the University of Maryland was a bastion of consistency from the time the Terps were an original member of the Atlantic Coast Conference in the early 1950s until they left to join the Big Ten a little more than a decade ago.
There was also excellence and longevity.
Three coaches — Bud Millikan, Lefty Driesell and Gary Williams — were on the bench for all but eight seasons in a span of some 60 years. Millikan led the Terps to their first ACC tournament title in 1958, Driesell to their second in 1984 and Williams to a third in 2004 after taking Maryland to back-to-back Final Fours and the program’s first national title in 2002.
Even Mark Turgeon, who followed Williams, lasted more than a decade and left with a winning percentage (66.1 overall, 57.1 in league play) that was on a par with theirs.
Yet it was Turgeon’s lack of postseason success — one Sweet 16 in five trips to the NCAA Tournament, and frequent early losses in both the Big Ten and NCAA tournaments — that frustrated a fickle fan base and ultimately led to his resignation eight games into the 2021-22 season.
Since then, the Terps have taken their fans on a rollercoaster ride of spills and thrills. Two NCAA Tournaments produced three victories under Kevin Willard, including one buzzer-beater to put Maryland through to the Sweet 16 last March. And one College Park constant: turmoil.
Can Buzz Williams, hired in the aftermath of Kevin Willard’s bridge-burning exit days after Derik Queen’s memorable wrong-footed bank shot two beat Colorado State, bring some stability back to what was once a model program for that staple? Unlike Willard, will Williams stay long enough to do it?
His arrival comes at a time when college sports has been altered with universities now allowed to pay their athletes, making coaches as much fundraisers as tacticians — if not more. Devising ways to pull in as well as dole out dollars (and some sense) is seemingly more important than coming up with X’s and O’s.
“He’s worked extremely hard his entire career to become what he is, and never ever rests on what he’s done or what he knows,” said Tom Crean, who first met Williams at a Nike coaching clinic in 2006 and hired him as his assistant at Marquette the following year. “He’s always looking for ways to improve himself, improve the people around him, which in turn helps make the culture of his program grow all the time.”
It also comes at a time when some of the most respected coaches in the country — a list led by two-time national champion Jay Wright at Villanova and Tony Bennett at Virginia — have left the sidelines. Bennett, who led the Cavaliers to the national championship in 2019, retired 18 days before the 2024-25 season began. Wright, a special assistant to the president at Villanova, hired Willard.
“It’s known that everything has changed,” Williams, 53, said at his introductory news conference in April. “I’m not talking about who sits in this seat — just talking about the business of college athletics. It has been rapid change at a rate that none of us have ever seen. But I think change is going to stay.
“The one thing that is constant is change. The one thing we have tried to focus on wherever we have been are the things that don’t change. Most of us, if not all of us, know the value of being on a team. There is something life-changing to being on a team. To be on this team means the world to me.”
And as meandering as that statement seems to be, it also appears to have great clarity: Williams, the coach who never stays in the same place too long, will be coaching players who essentially become free agents every spring. In what is now more the norm than an anomaly, Williams has rebuilt his roster entirely, from starters through walk-ons, in a matter of months.
When asked at the news conference what his team would look like, Williams said, “As soon as I can figure out who’s on the roster, that would be the first place to start.”
With a reputation for rebuilding in 17 seasons split nearly evenly among Marquette, Virginia Tech and Texas A&M, Williams might be the perfect fit. In the current landscape, five or six years at the same place can seem like decades.
Crean, who recommended Williams as his successor at Marquette when Crean left for Indiana after the 2007-08 season ended, believes that Williams would have been at the top of Maryland’s list no matter when or how the opening occurred.
“They got a guy that absolutely knows how to build, he knows how to get the most out of people and players, and he knows how to build lasting, long-after-they’re-gone relationships with his players,” Crean said. “When he locks into recruiting, it’s some of the most unbelievable things I’ve ever seen. His ability to develop relationships is unbelievable.”
On the court, Buzz Williams has the same reputation and nearly the exact same winning percentage that another coach named Williams had early in his own career. Through his first three stops at American University, Boston College and Ohio State, Gary Williams was known as a fiery, defensive-minded coach whose teams played extremely hard.
At his introductory news conference, Buzz Williams paid tribute to Gary Williams, who was in attendance that day.
“I’ve spent most of my adult life studying greats like Coach, watching press conferences like this, watching every postgame press conference, reading every newspaper article when that was important,” Buzz Williams said. “I’ve studied coaches my whole life, not ever thinking that my name would be in that mix nor that I’m deserving.”
In his first 11 seasons as a head coach prior to coming to Maryland, Gary Williams’ record was 207-128 (61.8 winning percentage). In 18 seasons, Buzz Williams’ record is 373-228 (62.1). Just as Gary Williams was helped by inheriting a winning program at Boston College from Tom Davis, Buzz Williams benefited by taking over at Marquette after Crean left for Indiana in 2008.
Crean met Williams as he was coming off his first season as a Division I head coach at the University of New Orleans, where the team had finished 14-17 and the city and the school’s athletic program were still trying to recover from the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina two years before.
With the exception of a COVID-shortened season in his second year at Texas A&M, it was only one of two losing records Williams has had as a head coach.
Williams took Marquette to five straight NCAA Tournaments, reaching the Sweet 16 twice and the Elite Eight in his next-to-last season, 2012-13, before going to Virginia Tech. He then led the Hokies to the NCAA Tournament in each of his last three years of a five-year run — the first time that happened in program history — and the Aggies to March Madness his last three years.
“Our program was in really great shape when he took over and he kept building into that and building onto that,” Crean said. “Then he took over a Virginia Tech program that should have never moved on from Seth Greenberg when they did, based on how hard that job is, and he got that thing to a whole other level. He did the same thing at A&M.
“He’s a natural leader who is constantly working on his leadership. He can really coach. I think sometimes when people are charismatic … and they’re so good at so many different things, it’s really about how good of a coach he is. He will be near the top at Maryland, if not at the top [of the Big Ten]. Buzz is going to be right there this year. I have no doubt about it.”
Knowing what Gary Williams accomplished, Crean added, “You can win a national championship at Maryland, obviously. I thought Buzz had national championship capabilities before. Now he definitely has them as you take over a program like Maryland with what you can do in the short term and what you can do in the long term.”
For that reason, Crean wasn’t surprised that Williams left College Station for College Park despite his deep Texas roots.
“Maryland is a top-10 job,” Crean said. “I’d argue that with anybody. They had their moments and they had their issues like everybody else does. When you have that tradition and you have location, when you have that league and the resources and access to things that they have, that’s an incredible job. That’s one that would be very hard for most to say no to.’”
Longtime college basketball analyst Jay Bilas believes that Williams’ track record speaks for itself.
“He’s been really good everywhere he’s been,” Bilas said recently. “He’s actually one of the best coaches I’ve ever been around. He’s really organized. He takes [analytics] really seriously. He’s got a steel-trap mind for those numbers. He knows at any given time in a game exactly how many paint touches they have … how many times they block out. Everything.
“What he really does is connect with players. While he’s got some idiosyncrasies that might set him apart from this coach or that coach, his players really love him. … He’s intensely loyal and he’s going to hold players to a high standard, but they know what the standard is. Then they hold themselves to that standard and they embrace it.”
That was evident when four of his former Texas A&M players followed him to Maryland, including senior big man Pharrel Payne.
Crean said one of the hallmarks of Buzz Williams’ teams is similar to that of a legendary coach in the Big Ten.
“The offensive rebounding, that’s one of the big areas that Tom Izzo made his career start the right way in the Big Ten, by putting such a big emphasis on rebounding,” said Crean, an assistant at Michigan State from 1995-1999. “I think Buzz does the same thing. I think Buzz is carrying over virtues of the program that go well in any league.
“But I think you give him the ability to recruit nationally from the power of the Maryland name, and to have the ability for people to come within 30, 60, 90 minutes of your campus, especially with his experience recruiting there in the past, I think that’s an incredible combination.”
Williams is off to a great start recruiting, having flipped Darius Adams last spring after the Class of 2025 five-star guard and McDonald’s All-American had previously committed to Connecticut. He also received a verbal commitment from Class of 2026 four-star power forward Adama Tambedou.
Despite his reputation, could this be a destination program for Williams in a new age when coaches such as Willard are leaving on their own after relatively short stays?
Speaking of what attracted him to leave a good situation at Texas A&M, Williams credited university president Darryll J. Pines for enlightening him on what had transpired at Maryland.
“I’m somewhat removed from civilization in general, but during the basketball season even more so,” Williams said. “So I really didn’t even know what had transpired and I think that’s what caught me off guard in my interaction with Dr. Pines. He told me what had transpired.
“That’s not to speak ill of Coach Willard or the team. I didn’t hear all of it. But what is relevant to what I thought was important, on the commitment going forward, on what is needed to be successful at the highest level, there was never ever any question from them on the commitment for us. I’m at peace with all of it.”
Don Markus covered Maryland athletics extensively over a 35-year career at The Baltimore Sun. He is the author of “100 Things Maryland Fans Should Do Before They Die” and co-produced a podcast, “Len Bias: A Mixed Legacy.”
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Maryland Athletics
Issue 295: October / November 2025
Originally published Oct. 15, 2025