On the heels of one of the best Texas A&M basketball seasons in the program's history, the Aggies will have to rebuild from the top down. That's because reports have surfaced that head coach Buzz Williams is leaving College Station to take over at Maryland.
This is news that Aggies did not want to hear. However, it had been rumored for several days since it became known that Maryland head coach Kevin Willard was likely to take over at Villanova following his team's run in the NCAA Tournament, a run that reached the Sweet 16. Now, Willard has officially taken over the Wildcats, and the subsequent falling of the dominoes has left A&M in the lurch.
Williams seemed to be a great fit in Aggieland. A Texas native, he was able to build a winning basketball program at a school where hoops will always be at best a distant second in terms of passion and support among fans.
Arriving ahead of the 2019-20 season after five successful years at Virginia Tech, he led the program to four postseason tournaments, including NCAA Tournament bids in each of the past three seasons. In 2022-23, his Aggie team was a one-and-done participant in the Big Dance, but in each of the past two seasons, A&M reached the second round.
Sources: Maryland will hire Texas A&M's Buzz Williams as its next head basketball coach.
— Jon Rothstein (@JonRothstein) April 1, 2025
That marked the first time since the 2008 and 2009 NCAA Tournaments that A&M had won a game in back-to-back Big Dances. Those two tournament wins came under former Aggie head man, Mark Turgeon.
Of course, the irony isn't lost on Aggie basketball fans. That's because, in 2011, Turgeon did exactly what Williams has now done and bolted College Station for Maryland after turning the Aggies around.
From 2007-11, Turgeon went 97-40 (.708) at A&M while leading the program to the NCAA Tournaments in all four years on the job. That included winning a game in the tournament in each of his first three seasons at the university.
Now, history has repeated itself as Williams has jumped ship for Maryland, 14 years after Turgeon did the same. It is a move that has to frustrate Aggies everywhere, given that Williams appeared to have the program headed in the right direction. Overall, he went 120-73 (.622) in six years on the job.
This season, he guided his team to a 23-11 overall record and a mark of 11-7 in the best conference in America, the SEC, which many think was the deepest conference in the history of the sport in 2024-25. That was good enough to earn A&M a No. 4 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
However, many were disappointed when the Aggies were unable to get out of the tournament's first weekend. A frustrating 91-79 loss to No. 5 seed Michigan in the round of 32 left A&M fans wanting more, as there was hope that the program could reach the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2018.
Still, keeping Williams would have been the outcome most people in Aggieland wanted, given the success he had brought to the university. That won't happen, though, and now, the rebuilding of an emerging basketball power will have to start by finding a new architect to shape the future of Aggie basketball.